Specced I to Cal, Gal, and Min commandos.

First, we need to establish what commandos should do. Are they heavy assault? AV platforms? Until we give them a clear role, balancing them is moot.

Oh I see how it is the suit that can carry two light weapons and get a damage bonus gets the attention but Assault dropsuits get no attention

(I've played around with all Commandos, heavy focus on Gallente with moderate on Minmatar. I'll avoid writing a multi-paragraph segment bragging about how many things I have trained.)

I fully agree that the Commando and Assault are largely redundant, and honestly in Legion they could combine most the bonuses/abilities into one suit and it would make a really solid role. But alas our bastard child that is the Commando exists, so we need to make due. I think it's fine that the Commando and Assault fill very similar roles, the important part is making each one fulfill a different facet of that role.

I think first we need to determine what the role of the Assault is under existing mechanics. Once we've determined that, we can see what other facets of the role the Commando could fulfill, without overly compartmentalizing the Assault role.

Assaults

Moderate-High Mobility: Well suited for closing distances and moderate flanking.

Weapon Support Bonuses: Offsets the weakness of Racial Weapons with Bonuses

Moderate Base HP-High Slot Count: Flexible yet capable of Moderate-High HP when fitted.

Medium Hitbox: Capable of relying on speed/hitbox to mitigate some incoming DPS

Weapon Fitting Bonus: Able to fit Higher tiered Light Weapons and Grenades with less cost.

So basically you have a role which is very mobile, and while not as quick as the scout, can still make use of less direct methods of getting from A to B. That is to say they are direct combat oriented, but not necessarily completely frontal assault.

They are not necessarily maximum damage dealers, as they don't actually boost the damage output of the weapon. Instead, bonuses offset negative attributes of their racial weapons, which in turn makes each weapon more flexible and viable in suboptimal situations.

In short, the Assault personifies direct but non-frontal combat, with a primary focus of flexibility and adaptability in the slaying role. Assaults are capable of putting focused DPS where it needs to go at the right time in order to get the job done cleanly.

So now what we've defined what the Assault does, let's look at some things that it doesn't do and discuss how we can tie those concepts into defining what the Commando should do.

Concepts to Consider and Discuss:

Direct Frontal Attacking (Higher Defense - Lower Mobility)
Maximum Damage Output (Bonuses to Damage)
Sustained Damage Output (Bonuses to Reload)
Quantity Over Quality (Suppression Abilities)
Less Flexible - More Focused Role (Buff Strengths of Weapons)

Additional Points of Contention:
Little Incentive to use Prototype (Only 2 additional slots) and extremely Low Slot Count in general (2/3/4) when other suits have upwards of (4/6/8). Just as a starting measure the Commando should have the same slot layout as the Sentinels.

Commandos lack a predefined role. Before any balance can be achieved a role MUST be defined. Suppression is bullsh*t because suppression is deterring enemis from acting. Unfortunately it requires range. Its why the HMG is not a suppression weapon. The ranges it operates at are so short that "advance and kill" is always the most efficient answer.

I use the commando as a substitute for bothering skilling into assault suits, because I have heavy frames already. Overall assaults work better because as "heavy attack" the commandos do not actually have any advantage over, say a gallente or amarr dropsuit. The damage outputs are similar even with stacking penalties because commando suits have less slots.

Adding a grenade is a bandaid. Adding another slot is a bandaid. It's not a bandaid when the commando role is defined and the suits reworked for that purpose. Right now they function as assaults except slower, easier to hit, with crappier scanning and the tightest pg/cpu in the game that I have seen.

It's in many ways more generic than the assault. It matches assaults for HP with no fittings, but usually fitting for tank on a commando is not an awesome idea.

Now the +damage feature of the commando is kinda neat, but in the case of the amarr commando the DPS output is anemic compared to the amarr assault because of overheat mechanics. The AK.0 COMMANDO TRADES 25% MORE FIRE TIME, or potentially 25% more rounds on target for 10% damage. The outputs of both laser weapons is terrible by comparison. My pre-buff A/1 assault suit was a better killer than my commando A/1 currently because of laser overheat.

Honestly I think commandos could make excellent door kickers and heavy attack if they had more slots, were bonused for biotics and sensors and could be spiked for "crash & smash" style play. But to be a shocktrooper they need to be able to compensate for slow speed, huge hitbox and anemic damage output on the amarr suits.

Now if we want to make commandos into suppression/support they need tank and they need RANGE. To be suppression units we would need to bonus them for range instead of damage, set them up for fast regen and shower them with ammo capacity and minimize the reload downtime.

Or we can make them infiltration and destruction, bonusing them for cloaks and demolitions gear.

But we need to pick a role. Nothing can be done except bandaid fixes until a role is chosen.

All this stuff will help commando to play its role which is the same of the assault but with less mobility.