What abilities should the commander have?

It might be tradition breaking, but I see the commander as a generalist unit that is able to defend itself and start the building of a base.

It shouldn't have special weapons or anything to heavy, its not a specialist. Just a rapid fire accurate cannon to kill early raiders, light AA missile (to kill early air raiders), amphibious.
No death explosion. It just falls over like any other unit. This + Annihilation being the default game mode makes commander sniping pointless and removes what I see as a flaw in late game SupCom.

I see the commander as a specialist, the embodiment of your strategy. Your choice in how you specialize your commander affects your strategy and your opponents. You can specialize in defense to easily thwart suicide bomber runs in late get—BUT—this locks you in to defense, you can't boost other attributes like economy, offense, intel… this makes scouting your opponents commander and finding his weakness paramount to developing your strategy and exploiting said weakness. Assassination becomes dynamic and varied.

I'd like to see specialization done through upgrade paths. You choose one path to upgrade along, which has linear upgrades. Each upgrade visibly changes your commander so people can recognize your commanders abilities.

Possible upgrade paths:

Economy
• Produces Additional Mass & Energy
• Quick Construction
• Remote reclaiming via commanders drones

Offensive
• Powerful Weapons (artillery, AOE Laser, improved firing rate, etc…)
• Boost Nearby Units Power
• Speedy Movement

Defensive
• Powerful Anti-Air
• Boosts Nearby Structure Defense
• Considerable Health

Intelligence
• Long-range vision and radar.
• Tracker gun (opponents units shot by your commander display their vision and radar intel to you indefinitely)
• Teleporter (slow recharge & opponent gets a ping of your landing destination if he had LoS when you teleported out, to kill hide & seek endgames)

In SupCom commanders could eventually become economy boosting, relatively tough, strong offensively, etc… But never tough as nails OR an offensive monster OR an economic boon. If we limit commanders to choose a single upgrade path they'll focus all their strength into one area which is balanced by great weakness in other areas. This would allow for varied commanders and strategies—rather than the well-rounded generic commanders of yore.

If you want to turtle your commander, use the defense upgrade path and hide him away with his gnarly AA to defend against bomber suicide runs. Choose the economy upgrades to get a production edge on the opponent—but—in doing so you'll lose the option for defensive upgrades, so you're commander stays vulnerable. Choose the intelligence upgrade path to keep dibs on you're opponents troop movements and teleport to quickly react, creating new expansions or firebases—you'll have powerful intel and mobility but if you get caught you'll be weak to defend or attack. See where I'm going with this?

UPDATE: The proposed upgrade paths aren't meant as final balanced choices, merely examples of what's possible. Further discussion is required to find interesting and balanced options.

I don't like the implications of an offensive commander. If an offensive commander could stand at the front of a 100 unit brawl and come out alive, the game would have cmdr duels all game long. While that in itself isn't a problem, it does invalidate all other uses for the cmdr. Basically, if one unit can always turn the tide of a battle it would always be used over other options. On the other hand, if the offensive cmdr isn't strong enough, no one will ever use it.

Offensive commanders could be designed without guarantee of surviving a 100 unit brawl, he's quick and strong but has average health and is a huge target. Choosing offensive commanders is high-risk/high-reward, suited to lighting strikes and quick retreats. Not everyone will choose offensive commanders and aggressively risk them in front-line duels if strong counters are viable with other upgrade paths.

An opposing strategy to the offensive commander is an economic commander, the economic commander sends out 200 units to battle the offensive commander and his 100 units—the economic commander stays safe at home while the offensive commander is in peril on the front lines. Which commander would you rather be? Both are viable.

I hear you, and agree that offensive commanders will often be chosen if their to powerful or rarely chosen if their to weak. All upgrade paths should obviously be balanced, having strengths which can be leveraged and weaknesses that can be exploited.

I just feel like this is one of those things that impossible to balance. I can definitely see some upgrades making the cmdr more useful in battle, but still as support (artillery, sniper cannon). Basically, if your cmdr is taking fire mid to late game (and it's not an accidental find on your enemy's part), then you're in trouble.

I'll add my tuppence to the topic...

For me the commander is the proverbial Swiss army knife. A single unit that can navigate any terrain, in any environment without support. It is the single most important unit in the game, the value of which cannot be calculated. It is the most versatile unit in the game and of course, the player's Avatar.

Since the commander is the most high value unit in the game. Being able to take it out too easily would obviously ruin the game. However, a commander should never be a powerful fighting unit. There is a difference between offensive 'commandering' and combat commanders. IMO combat commanders are just not a good idea.

By nature the commander is one of the most powerful builders in the game. Next to it's ability to survive in adverse conditions, this is it's primary function. Establishing the base is the commander's purpose and as such for me there are two types of commander; power builder and front line builder.

Of course, the commander must be able to protect itself when under threat, but as a non-combat unit it should require support. Being able to take out any unit in TA (even a Krogoth) with a single shot was IMO possibly over powered. Regardless, however powerful the D-gun is there must be a limit to it's utilisation to offset it's effectiveness. The lengthy cool-down and massive energy use render it a weapon that cannot be used indiscriminately. Particularly early on in the game when there is no energy storage to buffer it's use.

I like the idea that a commander might be upgraded to enhance either of the above mentioned traits or a balance of the two. Something like in SC where there are a series of 'slots' that allow the player to customise the commander to suit their style of play.

For example, if you like to use your commander as a power builder, you might choose options like advanced tech - to allow your commander to build both T1 and T2 units and increase build speed.
You may also select resource generator upgrades to increase the resources generated by your ACU or an engineering drone or some other such add-on.
Or perhaps you would prefer to utilise your commander on the front lines, where building is more dangerous and engineers just aren't fast or tough enough. Therefore equipping him with shields, armour, nano-repair, upgraded main weapon or torpedoes, AA, etc..
Other options might include omni radar, sonar or stealth that further enhance the commander unit.

Being able to turn your commander into an 'experimental' grade unit really makes it no longer a unit that must be supported and protected by other units. Instead it is the most powerful weapon in the game that can effectively be used for attack. It is therefore no longer a 'commander' but an offensive unit. That is not to say that a commander shouldn't be a hard nut to crack. Just that it's offensive power should not outweigh it's role. I've no problem with abilities like hunker, though I did vote against teleport. It's something I have a bit of a thing about. Either way, I believe I've covered everything I can think of for now.

Maybe you should add a travel feature. So the commander can perhaps blast himself off a spatial body with minimal gravity and fly through space for a short distance? As in without the aid of a rocket.

Another might be that they can cloak. Or maybe jam radar and the likes. Electronic warfare commanders?

In place of a unit teleportation for the commander, I believe a 'recall' fuction, similar to the one in the FA opening trailer, would perhaps be more prudent. A building that can effectively recall the commander from anywhere, at the cost of huge amounts of energy, and it being useless if it's just the one in your base. And it can be destroyed.

In terms of what I see in a commander, I'm with the sentiment that I want it to be able to either be a jack-of-all trade, or specialized. This could be accomplished by the separate commander types, or upgrades, but since the basically don't want to do upgrades, I don't know how it would work.

I know it probably won't be this way, but I appreciate being able to do things with my commander besides build crap, prevent early rushes, then hide him underwater somewhere. The commander should be able to fit the playstyle of the strategy sub-types; offense, defense, economy. It just gives a much more personal feeling to the commander in my opinion.

Now, ignoring what I just said, in terms of what they ALL should have, by default:
-D-gun. Never played TA, but this seems important. At least, overcharge was.
-limited anti-air. Before: Oh look. You decided to build a bomber to harass my defenseless commander. I bet you feel good about yourself now. Now: Oh look, you thought that bomber could completely invalidate my base. how cute. (Sort of a reference to FA. You can defend land rushes, but not air rushes? How does that make sense?)
-limited anti-naval (re-very limited): It kind of sucks to be defenseless in the water. Doesn't need to be anything substantial, just enough so that that one cheap as plastic sub that just happened to be there doesn't all of a sudden invalidate the commander.
-Anti-land: should be obvious.
-"Omni:" if there is stealth in the game, then this should be mandatory. FA commanders had this for very good reason. Doesn't even have to match the range of a stealth unit. The commander should simply be able to handle a limited force of anything. Otherwise, it becomes a glorified builder that, as has been mentioned, resorts to the strategy of hiding off in a hole somewhere so you don't lose.

What could be interesting, but isn't mandatory:
-Teleportation/Recall. I'm not really in favor of the former, but I think the later would prove to be a neat feature that could be balanced well.
-Jump jets: limited range, allows for traverse across odd terrain, or different heights. Was handy in SC2.
-Personal shield: A nice to have. has a faster 'repair rate' than armor, but there's less of it. Better balanced if you need a building for it, and destroying said building removes the shield. Or at least I would think.
-Stealth: For coolness and being able to prevent planned commander attacks. I think the full on visual/radar stealth that the Cybran featured would be over the top though, as much as I love that thing. Just radar stealth. Again, could use a building for it.
-Hunker: A lot of people didn't like it in SC2, and I can understand why. However, some last ditch effort ability would be a nice to have. Even if it was just a buffer against some low amount of damage. Again, could be a building that the commander alone gets into.
-Other coolio stuff. There's lots of good ideas out there. I think.

What probably shouldn't be included:
-arty: will probably be OP. Even if it was balanced, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I don't think. The range bonus in itself is enough to be a bit over the top.
-Accelerated building: a timer/cooldown ability that allows faster building for an energy cost. It would become a micro ability which we don't want for this game, or if it wasn't on a timer but was just on/off, it would be very difficult to balance.
-Advanced radar: theoretically, radar will be cheap. This will just be redundant, or be used as a scouting tool, which might not really be fair.
-Mazer: I want it. So bad. But I have to say no, for balance's sake.

TL;DR I would like to see the commander able to fend for itself in every tactical situation. Able to be beaten, of course, but not be invalidated just because some dude flew in a bomber and now my commander is toast. Specialization would be nice, but isn't necessary.

Definitely escape pod. I love escape pods.

I liked it too, it would be cool if you could mount a little search and rescue with your transport for example to bring back escape pod to your base where you would rebuild commanders body, and all the same enemy would also search for your commanders escape pod in hope to end the game.

In that way I tough of it similar to pilot ejecting from the fighter jet, either side doesn't know where he is exactly to avoid giving his position to enemy, just his side knows his ejection location and lets say general direction pod flew. Pod could also do a sort of a misleading random manoeuvre in fog of war so enemy couldn't know where exactly did the pod flew. When you get closer to your pod it starts to emit distress signal so you can pick it up, but at the same time enemy can detect that signal clearly and you have to be quick with your evacuation plan.

I would like to make the pod stealth an cloaked to all until friendlies come closer . Pod would be in a low power hiding mod until it detects friendly transport unit for example and than it would fire a signal smoke and ping a distress signal. That's one of my ideas. Naturally pod would need to fly to a relatively neutral or friendly region. Not into enemy stronghold, but also, if it happens to land into enemy... bad luck, pod was anyway a second chance many don't get and it shouldn't be a sure escape every time Also some cool-down could be implemented if a comm used it so he cant use it again for several minutes because escape charges are recharging or something like that.