Is there a formula that can calculate a Transformers' power? For example, in this website I found, Optimus' power level is 28, and Megatron's is 16. However, this site only has very limited TF characters, so I'm wondering if there's one for Transformers only.
Not really, because power levels and abilities are highly subjective in transformers and heavily subject what the authors want to do with the characters. You're probably not going to have any 'what?! It's over nine thousaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnndddd' moments in tf. There's been ways to compare the relative abilities of characters in certain areas since the earliest days of the toyline, using the tech specs, and a few of the card, video and mobile games have quantified transformers down to more simplified numerical scores (but even then, because you're factoring in game mechanics it might not really be a fair comparison for the characters). I don't think you can really look at the transformers and say 'okay Optimus prime is the leader and very strong so he gets a 21 and skywarp can fly and teleport anywhere so he gets a 12 and windcharger can control magnetism and literally shred or superheat metallic beings with a thought, so he gets a 7...'. So the best advice I can give is, don't necessarily put too much weight behind something you read on some website on the internet.
Yeah dude. I think your watching too much anime. How do you compare, raw strength from brawn vs teleportation to skywrap? One of the strong guys in g1 was laserbeak and he lives inside soundwave. So what does that count as? Kickback is the strongest we character we saw in g1 as far as raw might when he kicked in tiny bug form. Yet I would say hes not a very strong transformer. Maybe if you just added up all the numbers on the back of old g1 tech specs?
Generally, it seems that the faction leaders can take on a bunch of named characters from the opposing faction simultaneously with no problem, and the named characters can take on a bunch of cannon fodder/drones from the opposing faction simultaneously with no problem. It does seem like the franchise runs on authority equals asskicking (or especially vice versa for the Decepticons) at times. Could be justified, since the Decepticons explicitly tend to use strength and power as a criteria for leadership.
I agree. One thing g1 did fairly well. Both prime and megs were easily taken down by mooks when they had the disadvantage. And lesser characters are seen going down in one shot and other times holding off multiple opponents. Not that g1 is the best written show ever. Still using g1: Also like it power levels did exist that really thoughts a monkey wrench in somethings. Like the dinobot are strong but are quickly out smarts. And jetfire is a huge and powerful bot but like....he sucked at fighting. But something like power levels could be figured out in the cybertron trilogy. Also....those series sucked and had no dramatic tension for that very reason.
True, but I think Prime was the series that most emphasized my post. The Decepticon Vehicon fodder and later the Insecticons were pretty much taken out in droves by any named Autobot, but the faction leaders could easily take out a whole bunch of named characters on the opposite faction. This was probably demonstrated repeatedly in the series, as short of anomalies like Predaking or Unicron, no named Autobot or Decepicon really posed a credible threat to Optimus or Megatron in a straight fight. To an extent, the movie series also did more or less the same, though they gimped Megatron in the second and third films.
You do have a totally valid point. But prime also and the animes( all anime) have the some problem. And sure you totally can calulate power level in prime and the animes. When the insecticons first showed up they were unstoppable. But as there series went on they just became beatable. Never the joke the vechicons were, but beatable. But never a real threat again cause now thereveas a dragon to worry about. And having two unbeatable threats would be bad. And sure you can make the arguement the main cast grew in power. But they never made a point of saying that they became stronger so it comes off as just the writers forgetting state of the world, or a plot hole or just bad writing. This is of course: power creep. And its bad for writing. It kills tension and and sense of real mortal drama. Bumblebee is faced with 100 vehicons. Who cares. It now feels like time filler rather than plot of a fight worth watching cause you know bees is stronger than all of them. And speaking as an anime alot of time consuming effort with now pay off. Everyone just wants you to get to the import fights that matter. So why dont we skip the filler and just have all the characters on the same level? What does having weaker guys achieve? Worrying about power levels kills writing and investment. I think it's bad to even think about it. Ok. So let's keep the power levels. But avoid power creep? Well now your story ether leaves some characters on the side lines forever. Cough. dragon ball. cough. Or leaves some permanently stronger than the other. And the weaker have to use his skills and knowledge to defeat stronger opponents. And that...well that's good writing. And would make keeping track of power levels pointless. Cause raw power levels isn't the only factor anymore.
Yes. (STR+INT+SPD+END+RNK+CRG+FRP+SKL)/8 = Power Level on a measurement of 1 being the least and 10 being the greatest. This system was used from G1 through Car Robots, covering half the franchise. And since half of the modern era is a throwback, you can use old stats on new figures like Siege.
So average tech spec metric rank is power level? I can see that creating some comparison problems, especially with characters in the middle of the distribution.
I'm saying you're going to have a lot of characters with the same 'average', which is going to complicate the utility of comparing their 'power rating', even if you go down to decimal places, and on top of that, I expect simplifying all the different strengths and weaknesses down to a generalized number will lead to situations where some characters appear overweighted and others underweighted because of how their numbers are arranged. It might work for coarse comparisons, it should tell you that Megatron can beat Bumblebee and Optimus Prime can outpower Buzzsaw, but it might not have the nuance to compare every character to eachother. All its really saying is how many total points they have in their tech spec, divided by 8. It might be interesting to go through a year or two of toy releases, figure out those power rating numbers for their tech specs, and see how that lines up with their performance in fiction, however.
Soooo...no one can tie, then? I'm not certain what you mean by that. All the levels are weighted equally. You might think a high "courage" is meaningless - but when you think of it more as a charisma score and how effectively that character influences others, it takes on just as much weight as how hard a character can punch through a wall. There's a case to be made on all eight scores. Yep. But I suppose you can avoid the average and just sum the total points. That means the lowest possible number would be 4 (there are some .5's out there, IIRC) and the highest possible score would be 80. Unfortunately, the fiction is subjective. The stats are concrete, so it's the best source for power levels. One thing you can do, though, is give weight to certain factors such as alt mode. A speed of 8 for a Decepticon jet won't be the same as an Autobot car, for instance. A strength of 9 for a city bot is obviously not the same as a minibot with a strength stat of 9. Those stats only work when they are being compared to relative alt modes. With that in mind, you can add modifiers to stats so that they will reflect the character a bit better. Regardless, you will still get a fairly decent idea of power ratings in the TFU.
MY ORIGINAL CHARACTER IS MORE POWERFUL THAN UNICRON AND PRIMUS COMBINED Transformers power levels are inconsistent, look at Waspinator.
Quite the opposite. I think you'll have so many ties there won't be much point in comparing these ratings. I agree that the different scores are metrics for a useful ability in a fight (except rank, I never got why rank was on that list). By lumping them all together you remove context, though, and reducing the entire exercise down to a single number of how 'powerful' a character is becomes effectively meaningless, as least in my opinion. Is a character who's very brave more 'powerful' than a character who's faster, but has less courage? Is a character with high rank more 'powerful' than one with a lot of firepower? It's an oversimplification. Yeah, at least this way would save a step of division, but as I mentioned earlier, it removes the context of those abilities you mentioned above, and why they individually matter. The reason the tech specs have never really mattered for much of anything outside of toy packaging is because they were always just numerical placeholders for details about the characters. If you reduce them down to one score, you no longer know who's stronger or tougher or faster than anyone else, just who might be 'bigger' overall, but I think that's going to be an inaccurate comparison, because characters with certain skills and abilities are going to have advantages over others. I find the entire concept of trying to reduce a characters abilities, skill, and internal mindset down to a singular idea of 'power' to be infuriating to begin with though, so it might tie into that. Since there's no consistent scale for what each level of each metric means, tech specs are also a pretty subjective form of analysis. After all, they started as a crib sheet chart for Bob Budianski to compare the relative abilities of the cast of characters he was creating that weekend, not as a concrete system of evaluation. If you need to start adding weighting factors for things like alt-mode, that's another sign the system isn't really objective, just numeric.
All I know is that it's a system my friends and I used for years. It's also a system that's been adapted by homebrew RPGs. It works, in spite of some flaws. Otherwise, you would need to approach everything from scratch. And even then, your system would still be subjective.
