well, buddy. Then explain how Perceptor can easily one shot Devastator dissasembling him separately back into the constructicons. Also Megatron/Galvvatron can easily nuke blow up an asteroid or small planet but cant kill anyone except in the old movie.

 

Wizard did it. Simple as.

Same wizard also caused all those G1 animation errors.

Damned Wizards.

 

It makes sense to me; it’s an ‘organ’ for lack of a better word with a specialised function. No different to the kidneys or liver.

 

I think what makes Outliers and their abilities so special (at least in continuities that use them) is that the forcefields, teleporters, etc. are they are born/forged with them already rather having it built into them after the fact, especially during times of peace like most of the established Outliers. With Animated it's a different story (pun not intended) since that particular continuity is basically a "what if transformers were superheroes" scenario, rather than a "harder" sci-fi like IDW 1.

 

The answer to all is "plot device".

Starscream's spark free-floating is just the worst of all of them beside the Pim-particle inspired mass shifting... the two things that I'll never care for.

I'll just give my take on Sparks:

I see that as the character's core, where the defining personality traits are held, and possibly some of the memory engrams. I see them as a sub-space pocket that is able to create a neural net with energon being the building material and results in a self-generating environment. It's an inner-dimension pocket that can be accessed for "storage" for their accessories (weapons, Optimus' trailer) according to the "power" and strength of their sparks.

I can easily see mutations occurring during their creation that leads to the individual's ability, some have unique capacities (Mirage's invisibility), to some that are mishaps and the spark isn't perfectly done so the individual has some limitations (cassettes for example, which need to go in a dormant/storage phase to recuperate on a regular basis), while some are able to "split" (duocons, full as robots, but when split, cannot function as "detailed" as in humanoid form, so just as vehicles or such works well enough) and such.

 

I've fanon'ed the idea that Magnificus can use his scope to manipulate the Transformers' ability to mass shift (change). As in, he can force Soundwave or Megatron to shrink in robot mode or cause Astrotrain to grow into a shuttle-sized robot. It makes him fairly powerful when he makes a power play to take over the Decepticons until Megatron forms a truce with the Autobots to figure out a way to disable his scope.

 

Starscream having a tomb in the same area as Thundercracker, given that Starscream was a traitor. For that matter, Thundercracker having a tomb, given Thundercracker being changed into Scourge.

 

They're not tombs, they're markers. Nothing outright says that remains were kept there and even if they were, you sill have graves and plots for people in real life who have passed with nothing to bury. Plus Starscream's was, comically, incomplete as if the 'Cons in charge started to and then just said "never mind." Also just because Thundercracker's remains were reformatted into Scourge doesn't mean the Decepticons as a whole knew what happened to him or that he isn't still considered dead. Scourge certainly makes no reference to his previous life so Thundercracker is effectively deceased as far as anyone's concerned.

 

"Beast Wars" more or less explicitly stated that, for Predacons, and given that Megatron has G1 Megatron's spark at the time he declared it, likely true for their ancestors too, that treachery to overthrow the leader in order to gain power is kind of expected and socially accepted among Cons, it's "failing to dispose of me when you had the chance" as G1 Megatron once out it, that attracts punishment for incompetence, so just having overthrown and (apparently) murdered Megatron, only to be shortly after overthrown and murdered by Galvatron, probably doesn't leave much of a stain of disgrace on Starscream's obituary.

 

I think inconsistent damage output of weapons is what gets me the most. In scenes where a character is required to die, suddenly the weapons are lethal but otherwise the majority of the time weapons do the same minor level of damage. Weirdly this was something the Bay films avoided, for the most part characters would always take a consistent amount of damage from weapons, as Optimus demonstrated many a time.

 

Even back as a little Pretender Monster of seven or eight years old or so, I remember being confused why occasionally Megatron's cannon could burn big holes in people (chiefly the Movie), but generally it would just knock them off their feet, or how during "More than Meets the Eye", or rather "Arrival from Cybertron", as the much-treasured VHS tape was titled back then, Ironhide could receive a missile up the rear end from Skywarp (so to speak), suffer no visible damage to his armour at all, but still wind up injured.

I recall my conclusion at the time was that their armour was almost indestructible, but their internal mechanisms could be damaged a lot more easily. Which is surprisingly coherent and consistent, but still doesn't make sense because, well, that would make it the most useless armour ever invented.

 

From Beast Machines:

Why would a planet called CYBERTRON have an organic core?

 

We don't need explanations for it. That ruins things. Like the Prequel Trilogy for Star Wars when they explained the force and it wasn't something magical anymore.

 

Movies the hatchlings I wonder how are they born I assume none of them can get pregnant do they need energon or is it the allspark that creates them???

I like the concept of the star seekers but I am confused they hate beings from cybertron but aren’t they from cybertron? Maybe if the star seekers made it into prime this would have been explained.

 

Why would a planet called "Mars" not be inhabited by warriors? Why would a planet called "Venus" be, according to most research, a horrendously hostile unpleasant s**thole of a world, with little apparent affiliation to 'love' or any similar emotion? Because they were named by somebody based on what they, with their limited knowledge of the time, considered to be the planet's most significant characteristic, or how it fitted most significantly into whatever astronomical or astrological system they were using. Whoever named the planet 'Cybertron' knew that at that time, it was a vast machine-world peopled by sentient cybernetic systems, and didn't know that that world had been originally built around an organic planetary core (whether that world be a planet 'cyberformed' by the Quintessons, or a world corrupted and mecha-formed by Primus' essence, depending on your choice of backstory).

 

Starscream's ghost flows from the Life Sparks in the script drafts.
Hence Starscream's ghost in the TV series isn't immortal and needs a body to prevent eventual dissipation.

 

There is actually an explanation for that. In G1, Cybertron was just a random planet the Quintessons used to create the Cybertronians on. Even before Beast Machines, there was references in the G1 cartoon that Cybertron may have once been an organic planet at some point in it's history.