Okay, so I got into PCC, and I like it more than I thought I would. The playability and interchangeability are great. As I have said previously, I Think HasTak is gonna bank on this.

Anyway, after reading the sides of the packaging, about how this is an ancient technology that was recently rediscovered on earth; I began thinking about the drones and minicons.

Can one assume that the drones may be in fact a sparkless Minicon? The Minicons were once a part of the cybertronian races, and if I remeber the comic mythos correctly, they struck out on their own when things got bad for them. In the Armada Cartoon weren't there Minicons in a form of stasis or something? Previous threads posted on here about the personalty or personalties of the combiner teams when combined, also got me thinking. We also know that the commanders are part of the teams but apparently were not part the team's gestalt.

So with little being said about the drones and PCC in general, I was thinking of filling in some gaps with a couple of Ideas.

1. The drones for PCC ARE sparkless minicons that have been rebuilt to be controlled by the commander.

2. The drones ARE Minicons that have chosen to have their spark integrated into their commander and had themselves reformatted into limbs rather than robots.

Or...

3. The drones are just that, drones that were created by say the commander that has chosen to have a part of their spark incorporated into the drones to act as extensions of themselves.

I can see lots of good backstory (Which has always been important to me) with any of these ideas. But what do you think, could there be merit to any of this or do you have other ideas that I did not think of? 

 

PCC Combiners have no canon outside of the box bios and what little Hasbro has said.

I must say I like where you're going with option 3. It's almost like a inverse combiner that, rather than assimilating several minds into a gestalt, actually breaks a single mind into fragments allowing it to control more than one physical entity. That could also be used to explain the Minicon that comes packed with the commanders; it would act as a sort of subroutine that helps keep all the fragments connected and the overall psyche cohesive.

The fact that Minicons are a namedly seperate part of the PCC line leads me to believe that the drones are not any sort of Minicon.

 

The way I see it, commanders and minicons are sentient and the pairings between them are willful partnerships. Whereas the drones are basically empty shells that can function on their own but without much purpose or ability to do anything requiring much skill until a commander links up with them, hence their ability to be interchangeable.

 

Drones = Roller?

 

Roller is special, due to the weird psychic bond between him and Optimus. It's kind of silly. Why have a small vulnerable recon drone, if damage to the drone can directly affect your core unit?

But yeah... these drones might work that way too, except for the interchangeability thing. Seems like PCC's are supposed to be able to swap drones.

I'm not crazy about this line so far. The drones have limited appeal to me, and the scale seems too far off. I like the Scout class core bots, but the higher price point doesn't impress me, even with the included minicon.

zmog

 

My guess is that Hasbro left the canon for Power Core vague on purpose. Throw in a lot of canon and at some point Power Core is going to end up linked to the movies, Generations, or Prime. Leave it vague and people will just work it into whatever they collect.

Plus while we might talk junk about kids these days compared to how we were back then if you give kids a fairly blank slate they will fill in their own stories for how all their toys fit together. In a way you sort of have to admire that Hasbro is going for letting kids use their imagination rather than spoon feeding the whole thing to them.

Heck even as an older fan I've got to admit there is something that is rather fun about the mystery behind the Power Core mythology.

 

Truth.

When it really comes down to it, PCC doesn't need a "canon" specific to it... any more than the Scramble City combiners did, or the Pretenders did, or Throttlebots or whatever. They're just toy gimmicks. They don't need a whole distinct mythology to explain why they're different.

zmog

 

i just wish the drones did not have faction symbols on them.

 

The way I see it (based on the package blurbs) the PCC canon is whatever the fans want. for example, Huffer's seem to be a continuation of his G1 profile, while others seem to go more towards movieverse.

 

Power Core Combination - Transformers Wiki

Based on this tidbit of official information, it sounds like the process is intended to be more like #3 in the opening post, although they use "personality engrams", rather than "spark".

 

Well one PCC does appear in the Cyber Missions.

Anyway from the description of the Gestalt Process and Devastator's profile in the Hasbro site a while ago it seems PCC is somewhat set in a Movieverse setting. Though not outright saying it so.

The Matrix database could be the knowledge from the Allspark post ROTF where the Allspark downloaded to Sam who in turn uploaded it to the Matrix upon resurrecting.

As to how the Decepticons got it I liked to think it was Bombshock's betrayal in his bio.

 

I see them as brainless robots controlled by a commander but they have no sides anyone can use them. Like a gun for us. We control it but someone else can too if they take it from us.

 

Maybe that was just sneaky marketing to sell more toys. That way you need both the set of drones with the Autobot symbol and the set with the Decepticon symbol instead of just one generic set of drones.

 

What he said.

 

Yeah, that also crossed my mind as I used Huffer and combaticon drones and aerialbot drones to see what the Destron set would look like. LOL

This might also explain why the drones do not share a minicon faction symbol either.

Scantron: Thanks dude. I did not even check TF Wiki for this, but it does sound a lot like the 3rd option I posted about.

And to everyone else that has posted so far with ideas about this,thank you.
I really do like how hasbro has left it kinda vague. More for the imagination. This is what kids are good at, too. But as an adult I feel the need to rationalize this. Course then again, I am an adult playing with children's toys...But these are just plain fun. 

 

I think of the drone commanders like Optimus and his components or Guard City.

 

This is my idea for a Powercore Combiners cartoon in a thread on the Allspark.

A single human would pilot each of an Autobot Commander's drones which would have no intelligence of themselves and are basically regular vehicles whereas Decepticon drones have limited artifical intelligence but aren't sentient (think how Roller was portrayed in the eighties cartoon). The Dinobot drones would have sentience similar to that of Snarl and Swoop from the Animated cartoon and aren't piloted by Humans.

If the only humans were the Autobots's partners, then thats twelve humans so far - Aerialbots, Protectobots and Rallybots with each member specialising in their team function; air pilots, defense and racing drivers. Lets make the kid appeal character to be a vehicle pilot too so he actually has a purpose and have at least one of the Dinobots be the kid appeal animal partner. The humans don't need to always be around and can just be called upon when necessary. Sometimes members of the team won't be available and two teams have to work together and combine with Huffer, Searchlight, Leadfoot, Steelshot or Skyhammer having to step in as team commander. The humans can also hijack Decepticon drones and use them for themselves; likewise, the Decepticons can plant a virus into Autobot drones making them Decepticon controlled.



As for this particular topic, basically all you need to know is what it says on the packaging. Anything else is up to each individual - none of us are more right or wrong than someone else. If someone wants to use them in movie continuity, then thats fine. If someone else prefers them to be G1 characters, thats fine too. They're continuity ambigious for that reason.

 

All that stuff about the gestalt process, Devastator and the Autobots making "more careful attempts" sounds like it's describing Dreamwave's G1 backstory. That's kind of weird.

It does sound deliberately vague though, so perhaps I'm reading it like a horoscope. It just sounds like it's referring to the War Within version of Cybertron's history.

 

The Power Core Combiner i think are canon in the Movie Continuity. Didn't Smolder appear in Cyber Missions. I mean they have simmilair design asecthetics.

I like the look of the Drones, i mean no one questions Energon Optimus Prime's drones......*ahem Power Rangers ahem*

 

oh lot's of people questioned Megazord Prime and his non-TFing drones when he came out. (still the worst modern Prime IMHO)