Hi,
[RESOLVED: I just needed to add "$node->comment = 2;" to the node save.]
After weeks of trying other methods to create a speedy node type page that has 200+ CCK fields (no way to cut this down), I finally split this node type into two subtypes, one for "editing" and one for "viewing". When a person clicks on node edit (from the view node), it sends them to the corresponding "edit node" type, whereupon the 200 fields are either prepopulated and/or edited by the user. Once editing is finished, a cached copy of the resulting edit html is posted back into a field in the "view node" type, and this is the set of data shown to the end user when he or she is taken there via "goto".
The problem is that I am unable to get the comment buttons and functions to show up on this "view node" page. I checked the node_comment_statistics table and sure enough the nid of the "view node" type shows up, as does the nid of the corresponding "edit node" type.
I checked all my files to see if I am using "display: none" or any CSS like that, and I am not using it anywhere. I also made sure that any custom code exists for both the "edit node" and "view node" types, since it was the "edit node" that originally performed both functions.