Now, I'm not going to suggest any particular changes right now, as there's a really huge patch coming in and that has priority. What I'll do though is to try and translate to a written form my thoughts on why I think that the commander mechanics are not good game design.
Firstly, there's the wreck left by the commander, 2500 metal. This means that in any larger team game, it is always worth it to self-destruct one or more comms for a faster economy kickstart. Since it's a mandatory tactic that is not counterable, there would be almost the same effect if players were just given free metal off the bat. It's extremely unintuitive that you should destroy your most important unit. Unintuitive game mechanics are not good game design, nor are uncounterable, mandatory game mechanics good design.
Aside of self-d'ing near your base, another problem with the wreck is in the frontline. Combined with the blast radius (of which I could also write a whole paragraph), you'll often wipe out enough defenses/units of one team to let the other get both the wrecks. This is manageable in small games where player skills are roughly equal, but in larger games with bigger gaps between skills, I feel this just feels to frustration for everyone in the team who failed to reclaim the metal. One team getting 5000 metal is usually a game over and the result of that might be a single small mistake by a newbie (or even a good) player. If it was 1v1, you could say that the player should be more careful about their comms, but when it's a team game, you just end up punishing everyone else in the team for that single mistake of a single player. I think game mechanics that let a single player's single mistake to consistently decide whole games in a large team match are not good design.
There are also problems related to the commander in 1v1 and small team games. The commander's movement speed and construction speed both give him a huge edge over other T1 constructors. Commander has roughly 3x better build power than tank and kbot T1 cons, while he's also noticeably faster in movement than T1 kbot. Combined with the commander's weaponry, this means that comm pushing is a mandatory tactic. Because you also lose the game by losing the comm, the whole game tends to become a competition of who can juggle their commander the best. There's no chance to be passive with your comm, since if the enemy isn't, they're going to outshine you in expansion very, very fast. While early pushing with comm in itself can be a sound game mechanic - even a mandatory mechanic - what's less sound is the requirement to heavily use the comm in the frontline for first ~15 minutes of the game. Taking risks should be rewarded, but right now there's no alternative to taking those risks, not in early game at least. Again, it's an unintuitive game mechanic that you should constantly be risking your most important unit and it's not making the game any more dynamic or interesting in my opinion.
In summary, I feel that the game revolves too much around commander micro and the successes and failures of that micro.
If you read this far - thank you! Now have a blast with your response.
