Oh the irony... You're talking about different types of Vehicons from Prime yet you forgot one which you're named after! Also your Avatar picture is of a normal Vehicon not a Miner. Anyway... I don't think they were inspired by Sentinels specifically. Transformers had had a lot of look alike drones over the years... including in Beast Machines where the name Vehicon first originated from. The only difference is that Beast Machines had generals that would be the only one in a group who spoke and had a personality because they were the only ones who had Sparks. Prime Vehicons however seem to exhibit different personalities despite all looking the same and there was never one designated general with a name... However there was Shadelock from RID2015 who clearly shares the Vehicon body type from Prime and is the only one to ever be given a name. He also looks a bit different having two asymmetrical eyes and a mouth rather than a visor mask like the drones have. He looks kind of beat up as well... While never explicitly stated I think that Shadelock is the original Vehicon and the damage we see on him is from the Decepticons taking CNA samples to make clones of him. I think all the Vehicons we see in Prime are clones of Shadelock.
Oh hey you actually have a Minor picture now. I really wish Hasbro had made toys of the Minor type... and Shadelock. I have the FE, PRID, and Jet versions (the last one being the only Takara figure I own since Hasbro never released the Jet version in the states.) I'm not sure what the Minors would transform into but they do have different kibble from the cars or jets. I imagine because they're minors that it's probably some kind of drill tank. But I really like their doubled visored look... I don't know how they see like that but it looks cool. Oh there's also these guys... Unlike the ones who were actually in the cartoons where they all share the same body type and engineering despite transforming into different vehicles these three guys in the middle look entirely different. I don't think you could actually make toys of these guys just by retooling the same figures we've already gotten. These are from the Transformers Prime game and they are in order from car to jet... A tank, a truck (Similar to Octane, G2 Optimus, or RID1 Scourge), and a helicopter.
I would’ve honestly loved to see the ones in the middle on my TV screen. That’s a great design. The one that is a tank is completely amazing and could’ve been honestly a big threat on the battlefield if there were a lot of them. I like the visor look as well, I love how they drive around like maniacs in those strange mining machines. I love the whole idea of mining for energon and brining it back to the decepticon ship. It was such a cool idea in TFP. I also love how big some of the mines are and the fact that a whole episode took place inside of one is actually amazing. In the whole series there’s been so many mines and abandoned mines in the series I wonder sometimes how much energon the miners even collected. If I recall correctly there’s even a whole room in the con ship that stores energon. It’s jam packed with it. I’m surprised the bots didn’t try and find the room and blow up the whole half of the ship. Turns out it’s actually the fueling room for the ship and I did a bit of research. I’m still going to call it the energon room cause technically they store it there.
The Vehicons are more based on Stormtroopers from Star Wars or Cylons (sp?) from Battlestar Galactica than Sentinels. And, obviously, based on the original Vehicons as well.
As far as I'm concerned, the vehicons in Prime are all individual cybertronians. They all have reformatted into that body type as it's the uniform of the decepticon army, like imperial stormtroopers. And like them, there are varients for specific scenarios. After all, didn't the spark extractor work on some? Makes the prime autobots as blood thirsty as the bayformers, doesn't it.
