How to deal with commander rush?

So as the title suggests, I have this friend who is really good at commander rush. He will simply transport his guardian commander over to my base, and you can't deal with it! Any suggestions?

storages!

In any game, you need to scout. Plop your factory and queue at least a couple of your lightest, fastest units (even before constructors.)

A general rule that applies to every Zero-K game is that you should have some sort of combat unit built in your first minute, and you should be using it right away. Against any competitive player you will probably be seeing raiders in 1-2 minutes at most and you need to be ready for them. If you don't, there is probably some sort of rush on the way which makes scouting even more important.

Send them to look for your opponent. Gunships are not a normal start (if you see it some sort of cheese is on the way, either Revanant rush, blastwing spam, comm kidnap or comm drop), and if he's going to comm drop, he's going to building a Hercules. Your scouts might even show you he's already upgrading his commander. Comm drop is not really a rush strategy. The Hercules is expensive, and so is the metal (probably at least 2K worth) he'll be investing in upgrading his commander (he's not going to drop it at L1, it'll probably be at least L4 so he can have a second weapon or a special weapon).

The metal he spends doing this is metal he can't spend on taking control of the map. You should be doing this in any game. Zero K rewards early game aggression. If you just sit in your corner building a few metal extractors and energy, your opponent will take control of the map and have the resources to spend on buffing his commander. If on the other hand you are taking the fight to him and securing metal spots while doing so, he will not be able to pump his commander because he will be too busy spending resources trying to defend his own economy.

By playing aggressively and securing map control, you will have ample resources to deal with the commander any way you want. In the worst case scenario, a Stinger or two in your base with a bit of support should stop it in its tracks. Alternatively, most factories have anti-heavy specialists which will make the job much easier.

And once it's destroyed, it's a large gift of metal.

Hey thanks the_green_squig for your long reply! it is always good to know there is an active player base in a game. I also heard from a few other people, and I think next time I am just going to try and build like 5 llt, and just expand a ton taking advantage of his upgrading.

How you deal with it depends on how rushed it is.
If you scout (and as the_green_squig says, scouting is vital) a Hercules being made in the first minute than upgrade your commander with the lightning gun and start building Lotus immediately.

If it's not an immediate rush? Then recklessly build mexes all over the place and take advantage of his slower expansion :D
At your level being very aggressive with raiding (to keep your enemy feeling defensive and not attacking) and doing a naked expand (building undefended mexes everywhere) is a winning strategy.

The defense from a commander airdrop is what people wrote, basically morphing your commander just to get the weapon, having a lotus built, then a bit of investment in riot or skirmisher. Radar helps to know exactly when and how they're coming.

there may be a "hidden" issue here : The overall attributes of the big air transport. It's fast, somewhat tough and has 100 dps vs ground targets. It also flies high enough to avoid being targeted by some of the shorter ranged riots and can kill them and skirmishers with impunity, given some time.

It can also quickly snap down and grab the enemy commander if he stops and the player looks away for 3 seconds...

Ronin.

destroy him before his command is tanky enough to destroy your base

How to deal with com rush, Shaman style

rush a stinger in your base