I've always wondered how the decision is made regarding how many combiners there are in teams etc. The reason for this is that I presume when it comes to the teams personalities amalgamating into 1, they function via a vote system.

e.g. Say a group of bots (6 for example) have combined into one mega bot, and the situation regards they must make a decision over something. What happens when say 3 choose 1 thing and 3 choose another?

Thats why I presume Devastator in the movie and combiners in other TF stuff can never be made of an even amount of bots. You get me? ha ha.

 

uh, no. I have no clue what you are talking about. Then again, it IS the movie forum and nothing people complain about is surprising...

 

So the Constructicons are a democracy? That blows!

 

I assume the combined form has a single mind instead of 7 minds. Our own bodies are made up of trillions of cells and trillions of bacteria but we have only 1 mind.

 

So one bot is the Dictator over the rest ya that makes sense.... puts them bots in there palce

 

Tiny-stater is made of six members.

Spoiler

Hasbro confirmed at Botcon that there is not a set number of robots that make up Devastator...or even a set Devastator configuration.

Devastator uses as many robots as are needed/are available, and can jetison damaged robots in battle to take on new ones and stuff.

 

There have been four-member combiners such as Build King, and two-member combiners such as Safeguard and Omega Prime. G1 Devastator had six, and ROTF Devastator's Supreme Combiner toy has six.

Also, ROTF Devastator is a mindless monster rather different from any of his component parts. There's no voting going on - they merge, then Devastator starts to wreck stuff.

 

WHOA WHOA WHOA! Wait a MINUTE!

Spoiler

If what you said was true, then Scavenger, Rampage, Mixmaster, Scrapper, Hightower, and Long Haul AREN'T all that special? They are easily replaceable!? Wow. That does a lot for Long Haul's self esteem issues  

 

Just read this recently on Bruticus. This is for those familiar with the G1 cartoon series. I didnt know that Bruticus is actually the best combiner amongst all the other gestalts.

 

I think the guy who forms the head, if they donèt need MIxmaster, would control Devy. That would also mean Devys intelligence would change too. That would be interesting to see.

MTL

 

Kind of like swapping a persons brain in a sense.

 

Its a movie people. Besides Michael Bay controls every bot in the movie.

 

Maybe each one has a piece of the combined form's brain, and it activates upon combination. Just a theory.

 

there are 7 constructions in the TF2 movie. Hasbro couldn't figure out how to include overload in the toys.

 

Actually, I think

Spoiler

Scavenger is the key here. From the reports of the footage, the chains launch out of him and latch onto the other guys. From the tv spots, it does not look like a pleasant experience for those.

You know, I wonder if THIS is the key to Scavenger's name?

 

I didn't think the 'odd number' thing had anything to do with the film. Everyone of the G1 combiners was made up of five except Devastator, who had six. I thought dropping it to five was more Hasbro's decision when popping out toys than anything to do with the makeup of the character when combined.

The movie's take, if it's more 'it's six or seven...or whoever happens to be there, and each can be replacable' makes sense for a behemoth that depends on smaller bots to turn into it. If Demolishor dies in the beginning of the film, and was meant as the torso of Devastator...well, say goodbye to Devastator 15-20 min. into the movie. Being able to replace 'bots (especially key 'bots, like whoever ends up the torso and head) is a good idea, even if it ends up diminishing the roles of the individual 'bots themselves.

 

If I may... there was a mention of "Other TF Stuff". while normally we think of gestalts/combines as 5 (1 torso, 4 interchangeable limbs) I'd like to point out the original G1 Devy was indeed 6 bots. Long Haul (the dump truck?) was actually what I'd call the abs, while the crane became the pecs/shoulders

also of sorta note is Prinahacon, who had one torso and FIVE Limbs to arrange because that odd man out limb could become a weapon

so, its not really Always 5 bots in a gestalt... its just 'easiest' for configuration purposes

Edit: hmm.. seems Lbsammills51 beat me too it ^^

though I will say that Dev was a different combiner than the others because the other combiners were "scramble city" combiners and in the original toyline they came from, they were meant to interchange limbs... thusly, all those combiners had the same number, 5, for scrambling purposes

 

think of it like this. each bot has thier own OS along with a partition with the gestalt os. When they combine, the primary OS goes into hibernation and the partions with the Gestalt OS bootup and take over

 

Combiners have their origin in the Japanese robot cartoons. Usually one of the human drivers takes charge of the combined robot. In Getta Robot, 3 vehicles can combine into a larger robot. The larger robot had 3 different looks depending on how the 3 vehicles combine. Voltes V popularized the use of 5 vehicles to form a robot which explains why most of the G1 combiners had 5 components. As for transformations, Daimos starts out as a large truck like vehicle and turns into a robot. In Transformers, the combined robot seems to have a single combined mind rather than one of the components serving as a leader.

 

I think the reason we often got an odd number instead of an even number was because it was easier for the designers to make a combiner than it has to do with any thought to the story idea of how they would work.

Since they are machines linking up and not people in mechs linking up machines I think the who is the leader doesn't work out the same way. Think of say the internet where computers are all linked up, it's not so much which computer is in control as it is how well do those computers link up and work together. While you use one set of programs do things off line when you go on-line you need something like Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome to work on the net. So when the robots link it seems like instead of their individual programs all calling the shots they would go into the combined subroutine. Thus say Mixmaster would drop the Mixmaster personality and start operating under the Devastator personality.

Of the ideas of how to do it I've got to say I like the movie idea better than some of the past ideas. Just seems like keeping the numbers flexible and which sub-team members can form just opens up so much more from both a story telling and toy making perspective than the old rigid system of this many bots and this is who forms what part.