The trick is to find new abilities for the Commander.  Things which are uniquely Star Warsical. To me, the most important part of having a Commander is co-ordination of squads, and being able to root out those lone wolves/flanking squads who are running around behind the battle lines.

Dropping an ammo box is boring and 2142ish.  But, what about using the "moving the titan" code to move a GONK droid slowly around the map? It's too slow to keep up with fast-moving squads, so it might actually be stuck when the enemy moves in -- perhaps that would be the time to self-destruct...?

Don't let the GONK repair vehicles, though, like that lame ammo box. Maybe some kind of animated Treadwell droid or R2/R5 units could roll up and do emergency repairs.

Instead of orbital strike, have a TIE Bomber/Y-Wing swoop over the battle and drop a bunch of proton bombs/torpedoes in the area.  Or, even scarier, drop a wide pattern of proximity mines...?

Always remember, whatever the ability, you can seriously keep it from becoming too powerful by changing the wait-time between deployment. This should probably be its own topic, but feel free to add any other possibilities which may come to mind (any beyond dropping jetpacks, lightsabers or jedi/bounty hunters, of course)...

SQUAD...fetch me a piece of...PIE.
Squad leader: "Sir, that hardly sounds important and..."
*shoot*
Hey you, janitor, come over here. You're my new squad leader. Congrats.

When squad leaders ignore me , I orbital strike THEIR asses  !

You're a smacktard.

Having the same commander abilities with a Star Wars look is jsut going to bring this mod even closer to v2142 gameplay... boring.

Espa is a push map. And Entha requires teamwork in the form of control point defense. If everyone just run from newly captured control points, it just becomes a game of whack-a-mole. <snip> And yes, I agree with Ty, this mod needs more teamwork. I fear we need to simply force it on players more, by limiting equipment and such to people in squads, near their squad members, and so on.

Actually, standard conquest-style maps work better in vanilla because of the Commander.  The entire map doesn't always need as much funnelling structure/stricture if there's someone looking at the "big picture" and telling different squads to stay put.  With a good Commander, he can scan the map, see where the enemy is going and tell Squad Leaders to defend, attack, split up, etc. as needed.

The main reason things become "like whack-a-mole" is because nobody wants to be left out of the action. A competent Commander (not one who goes flying around the map on his own) will find use for each Squad.  Even defenders will stay where he tells 'em to be because he knows there's an enemy assault on the way.

I've done very little Commanding in vanilla, because I really hate the pressure.   Because of that, I'd spawn in the uncappable base, and stay there the whole time, trying to give everybody a useful order.  The only reason I'd leave is if I noted a single enemy dropping in behind our lines, and knew I could stop him myself faster than ordering a squad back.

If we could find more "Star Warsy" abilities for the Commander, and could somehow limit him to staying in one place (lock him in a (static) shuttle for attackers, in a command base for defenders), that'd really improve the teamwork, and open up the possibilities for more Conquest maps.