I'm going to assume that these robots are so intelligent they are conscious and able to feel and think individually even thought they are bound to obey the commander. In Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation units didn't have any kind of personality. They just did what they were told to do and if they were idling they would be completely still. So my suggestion is to add idling animations. They could for example look around, look at each other sometimes and react to stuff that happens around them. Maybe they could even make some robotic noises from time to time, not just when you click them. No, I'm not saying they should be like Wall-e. Just more... alive. Some of you might think that this doesn't make sense because they are robots but so are we. What do you think about this?
I would think that the robots are created for the sole purpose of obeying the commanders every command, and that they are mindless killing machines not made for any other purpose. and no... we are not robots.
Actually there's really good battlefield reasons to have your grunts be as smart as possible. There's a million split second reactions you need to deal with, and communicating with a main server to figure out what to do is going to slow you down compared to a local process. The more you can shift local tactics onto the units in the field, the better. And creative thinking is good for coming up with creative solutions, so having a personality isn't all that far fetched. Additionally you could very well have the unit perform some kind of maintenance while it's waiting, to make sure it's in tip top shape.
Animations may be the most expensive type of art asset- and you want there to be extra, totally unnecessary animations that do absolutely nothing in terms of gameplay? And different ones for every unit? When there might be hundreds of units in the game? And which the player never sees unless they zoom in on units that are doing nothing? No.
Something to point out is that the intelligence required for good impulse decision making isn't at all tied to consciousness. Grunts should only question orders as far as "will not blowing up that factory make us win faster?"
While not necessary, if Uber has extra time pre- or post-release I would hope they could add some. At least for the commander.
And at what point does an intelligence that makes outside the box, creative decisions become conscious? Just because you're constrained to obey orders 100% doesn't mean you lack personality.
I don't know where that line is, and you make a good point. My point was that consciousness is a double-edged sword, that may not actually be needed.