Name is Cliffstream and I am a new member here and a big Transformers fan.

This has crossed my mind a few times whenever I am watching any Transformers series with my son or reading the comics. Imagine a Transformers can scan new alt-modes in order to confuse their enemy on the battlefield or even infiltrate their base to get more intel. Can a Transformer whether it's an Autobot or Decepticon, re-scan new alt-modes?

- Cliffstream

 

That's a really interesting idea, though it doesn't really like like Hasbro thought about it much. Even the double-agent characters (except TFA Shockwave) tend to have both their identities share the same alt mode, which makes no logical sense. But in AOE, Optimus scanned a new truck (2 times, 1 off-screen, one on-screen), so it looks like they can freely scan new modes. Though out of universe of course, it all depends on what Hasbro or Takara wants to sell.

 

It depends on the fiction, is the short answer.

Some continuities like Transformers Prime and the Movies show the whole "alternate mode scanning" as being possible in the field and relatively instantaneous. Others, like Beast Wars and the Generation 1 cartoon, depict it as needing external machinery and scanners, so a field modification is extremely difficult (and Beast Machines also shows how hard it is to lose an alternate mode in the Beast continuity - Megatron spends an entire season trying to purge his beast mode. Granted, the show also had reformatting be a thing, but again, it needed an external source, this time the Oracle channeled through Optimus Primal)

One place it was done was the 2007 Nintendo DS movie tie-in game. You were rescanning vehicles in the field all day long in that game. Granted, not for evasion purposes. It's never been done in the shows or comics to my knowledge, but in those continuities like the movies where it is possible, it would make for a very interesting story / twist. I could see the movie series doing this actually, though with the movies having things like Transformers detector tech they've sort of undermined it. Unless they conveniently forget the tech. Which, let's face it, is also not impossible.

 

Welcome Cliffstream, cool topic.
This is kind of what I hope happens with Galvatron in the next Michael Bay film. His unique transformation combined with the learned ability to turn into anything he wants at will giving him limitless advantages, sort of like the Smoke Monster/The Man in Black from Lost, a shape-shifting at times intangible force to be reckoned with. Try to take that guys face Movie Prime you psychopath!

 

Welcome Cliff, and a very good question to start out with!

Wasn't this an issue that was discussed with Spychangers(?) back in G1? And part of the selling point of RTS, even though they messed up by having obvious Autobot and Decepticon figures in the line?

I would surmise that both factions give off a sort of "signature", like IFF (Identification Friend or Foe), though it would be possible to mask one's signal or alter it so as it would appear to belong to a different faction.

I do generally believe that Cybertronians have a way of determining if a mechanical object is a robot in disguise or not, simply by performing a small scan, however determining what faction the bot belongs to, or who it is may differ depending on the skill set and equipment of the bot doing the scan and the capabilities of the bot being scanned. A very ingenious and crafty Decepticon could be capable enough to defeat enough Autobot security scans and infiltrate Autobot bases and vice versa.