I like the gold idea... Perhaps there could be a limited amount of gold/money to spend at the beginning of each game. This would make players much more likely to want to listen to their commander as they would only have limited weapons at there disposal. Having airstrikes which need to be 'spotted' is great idea also.

I am slowly forming an idea now. I think the make or break aspect if the game is going to be the pace i.e. Getting the Rainbow Six/Quake3 balance correct...

Mark

If you were to build on online community, you could also have support for clans. New players to the game would start in a public area, but once they were recruited by a clan, they would generally play with other members of that clan. That way the clan could handle command roles, determing who can and can not command during clan games. Another way to discourage hot-dogging players is to have the Commander assign each players post to a specific spawn point or player(they would spawn at the spawn point closest to the player they were assigned to). That way if you rush in and die all the time (i.e. act like an idiot), the Commander can just put you on some out of the way detail where you wont see any action.

Have a look at Soldner, that's probably one of the games which inspired DICE when they designed their Commander feature. The game may not have been an success but that was the result of a very, very, buggy game.

As far as I remember everyone can start a vote for the commander. He still is a player and could just ignore his "powers", something which I think is important. Don't take away all the action! Anyway, every player has his own bank account from which he can buy weapons, equipment, vehicles, helicopters, jets etc. but usually he'll never make enough money to get this neat stuff. The commander however has a team bank account which gets filled up, this money can then be freely used to buy a Harrier for example. Of course he has an extended map view from which he can give commands, set up waypoints for players etc.