Basically, every month 100 commanders from each faction will be elected and become generals.
From what I know in the previous game, when you'r squad captured a base and you were a squad leader, you would gain command points which would allow you to get command ranks that would give you special abilities.
This system should stay for commanders, but generals would be like the 6th rank of commanders and will be the most important personalities of the faction.
Now the powers of the general are: Using global chat (commanders would get continental), orbital strikes, making command plans with other generals (idea was already discussed on this forums), in case any of those giant battleship ideas will be made in the game then they are the one who would be able to navigate them and a 30% buff to every stat to troops in the radius of 50 meters as a moral buff.
Of course there are many other abilities that can be given to them but I don't have any.
You can be elected when you have 3rd command rank or higher and play 8 hours a week or more (so that there are no inactive generals).
The 100 commanders who have the most votes become generals.
You can vote for somebody just by choosing the option of "vote for [name]"
(outfit members cannot vote for each other to avoid fixed votes).
This would show that the community trusts the elected players and would make sure that generals are not possible griefers or spies from other factions.
Please don't flame or anything, this idea is still under construction so feel free to add ideas expand and improve it.
Commanders in PS1 from wiki:
http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Command_Rank