Commanders leave wreaks.

That is what I meant. I put team color in nanolathes. If not team colored craters, then team colored ones will be definitely moddable. "If not the other is moddable" as in if not then the other IS moddable, not if not please try to make the other moddable.

I don't even. Either way. I know for a fact if added it would be moddable. I was displaying assuredness, not requesting that it will be.

Alright, that I understand . Having said that, the colour of a crater is held in the texture. You might be able to do something funky with shaders, but it's actually more likely to not be moddable.

I assumed the shader would be what would be moddable. That is how you mod a lot of stuff. It isn't like there is 20 different textures for every unit in the game, 1 per color. It is a shader ofc, no? Same with gas giant color?

Unit objects have player IDs attached to them that the shaders can use to colour them, but terrain is not owned by a player, and has no player ID. So to colour it in a player colour, I imagine a creating use of various hacks would be needed to work out which player it belonged to, if it's possible at all.

It would need traced from a series of events. The commander explodes. The explosion is owned by player. The explosion would create a crater, theoretically that would be created by the player's com explosion. The crater could possibly be shaded depending on the projectile that created the crater to begin with? Idk, I like a challenge...

Short version:
You don't like that the com leaves a wreck. At all.
Because after the explosion should not leave any wreck and you don't think players should need the extra "carrot" of reclaimable wreck to kill the commander.

Explosion can be change to be less epic.
And few player will have a relevant effect from recycling him.

If we realyl want to go for realism:
Chernobyl left a husk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_Disaster.jpg
And we can't get closer to "nuclear reactor exploding" then it.
Explosions always look for the path of least resistance. Once they found that one, they go it and leave the other paths be.

Actually a energy source nuclear reactor exploding like a nuke is not realistic in the first place. Atomic weapons are among the hardest to detonate weapons we have. The first two nukes had missfire chances over 10%. If they don't properly chain react, there are meerely dirty duds.
A nuclear meltdown of a reactor will be a huge radiation issues, but not any real explosion. At least nothing big compared to what TNT can do already.

But this game does not go for realism. It goes for the rule of cool.
It is cool that they die in a nuclear explosion.
It is also cool that they leave a wreck. It is "bring you own gravestone" day in Planetary Annihilation, every day of any solar system.

Note as cool a gravestone as Therkla's, but still pretty cool:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0598.html

put in place a husk that is just the legs with a frayed and exploded looking waist.

To quote you: One : because of the "WTF" and anticlimactic factor of a wreak being left in the center of what would otherwise be an epic explosion

I actually think that leaving the commander's corpse is a nice touch. On the subject of reclaim in general, however, I have seen it become useful on earth planets - if you're absolutely starved for metal, area-reclaiming trees can help fill your storage. It's not efficient, but it works.

On the subject of wrecks and reclaim; What if units had a % chance to leave behind wreckage? It could be different per unit. Examples:
Boom Bots: 0%
Dox: 10%
Bolo: 15%
Inferno: 25%
Vanguard: 50%

However, this doesn't address the biggest issue with wreckage: Naval. When it was implemented, it made Naval even worse than it is now, as your units would always get into a traffic jam as soon as a single torpedo launcher was present. The idea of "sinking" wreckage was proposed, but it's still a pretty big issue. And it would be a total mood-killer to have something like a Vanguard leave a wreck, and have a Leviathan twenty times its size leave nothing.

If a unit is over killed it doesn't leave wrecks, having random percentages isn't exactly WYSIWYG.

yah... you arn't getting me. nowhere did I suggest it should leave something else. I think the factor to consider here is total vaporisation. it should leave nothing behind. THAT would make it feel like an explosion that packs some UHMPH.

the wreak makes it feel...... well exactly like it is.... your imagination has nowhere left to travel.... it feels like a big cloud that progressively looses it's opacity appeared on top of the commander and at that time the commander 3D model was unloaded replaced by a corresponding wreak loaded in it's place. ...no room for imagination at all.

it doesn't feel like anything exploded that would correspond to that mushroom.

at their epicentre nukes leaves craters where skyscrapers stood. this doesn't feel real.