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how many points though? Since the rest of my army is all bikes with meltas and flamers, I think I can get away with one squad kitted out for assault. Trying to get meltas AND shields and hammers drives its cost beyond useful, IMO.

you need a tough assault unit though, playing without one makes life a lot more difficult. Plus, the jacked command squad is pretty damn tough, it should maul anything it assault baring the other most powerful assault units in the game.

It should, yes. but if you blow 400 pts on it, you severly cut into whatever else you can bring to the table. Mine, like posted earlier, wipes everything it hits on the charge (closest I got to not doing this was hitting Tzeench terminators. lost all but the standard bearer, but still ran them down). in 1750, this unit needs to not only be effective, but it needs to be cheap. if you really wanna max out the Khan+bikes command squad o' doom, take a diry cheap chaplain on a bike. 135 pts gives all those power weapons re-rolls on the charge in addition to FC, which really comes in handy when hitting WS 4 dudes, AS WELL as his own bucket of powerweapon attacks. Plus, in games where the command bikers may not be as useful (like fighting lots of crappy guys. like tau or guard), he can be tossed onto another squad to spread combat usefulness.

I also take that 5-man biker squad w/ AB (as a troop unit) and Outflank them so they come in mid-late game. I've used them to contest an objective and as tank hunters. In both they work good. When I put them into CC, they fair as well as any other 5-man marine sqd (though a little tougher).
I usually have my Khan Command unit Outflank as well and for whatever reason, the outflanking always confuses opponents. Do people normally not outflank?
And sadly enough, the last game I played against IG, my Khan squad never saw CC. I used them to form a block to keep 2 squads of sentinels, a squad of orgyn and some guards at bay. They didn't want to assault, and I strung my khan squad out so they could not get past. It worked, I won.

Outflank doesnt seem to get much use where I play, except for when I use it. It does scare the juice right out of people though. I have had opponents deploy in an 18" block in the middle of the table to avoid me jumping them first turn, which only really resulted in him blocking off a lot of his own shooting when I showed up.

For bikes, it does usually force your opponent to shoot along his own lines, and almost always gives your a lot of 4+ cover saves, which is good, because you can't claim the TB save if you wipe a unit at a bad time. In a lot more cases, it blocks off a few nastier units of shooting.

Clever opponents will place a tasty lone squad near the table edge to entice me into assaulting it, and have a few nasty surprises nearby to kill me after (like a demolisher in a recent game). I was fortunate enough to have 2 bike units come in that table edge that turn, so I boosted one around the bait squad, in a wide fan formation, and assaulted the bait with the second squad. As expected, I wiped the guardians first turn, and consolitated spread out as much as possible to minimize ordinance shots. with the 4+ cover I recieved from my other squad obscuring me, I only lost 2 bikers.

Again. I think this only works if you max out bike squad size. 2 casualties is pretty manageable if you have big squads. its crippling if you have 5.