Holy crap do I disagree with the premise of this thread. Yes, the Cons in the movies where characterless, but so were the Bots and even the humans. Since the movies we've had Animated with Arguably the best Decepticon Megatron ever. His Cons were full of character as well. As for your opinion on Prime, being a short lived character does NOT mean the same as having no character at all. This Starscream is one of the most characterful Transformers characters in history. Knock Out oozes his flamboyant personality onto the audience (enjoy that mental picture). Breakdown was thuggish yet not a standard evil thug; he even questioned turning on Bulkhead. Airachnid delighted in playing and tormenting. Dreadwing was a great example of a Con who showed that not all Cons were evil. Just because they have an army of vehicons doesn't mean the rest of the small cast of Cons have less character.

And to address another of your points, in G1 the casts on both sides were basically just archetypes. None of the G1 characters were deeper than a drop of water.

So your entire premise stems from disliking "Stormtrooper" Cons. That's fine. That doesn't make the deeper characters we do have from being deep.

 

I guess you have a point with the movie Autobots. I'll have to think about how that effects what I'm saying. Although I'm talking about shows that were produced after the movies came out so you don't have a point with Animated.

Everyone tries using Operation Breakdown to prove breakdown was an interesting character. But outside of that single episode, he was pretty much just a thug.

Airachnid was just filler for the plot. She had no consistency in her role in the story. She was whatever the story called for her to be. AR's rival, Scream's rival, a rogue, a stand in for Scream/Dread and the leader of the Insecticons. She rarely appeared then when the story no longer required her, they wrote her out.

I might have made a mistake by putting Dreadwing with those two. He was a plot device for his own story. I know that sounds stupid but let me explain. Dread only appeared when his story needed to advance and even then, he often would disappear outside of the necessary scenes. You get the feeling that if it was possible to do that story without a character, they would have done so.

 

The Prime Decepticons pretty much

Spoiler

ruined the Autobots at the end of season 2.

They were shown as actually evil complete monsters. The part where they all laugh at the Autobots....sells me on that they are the most villianous versions yet on screen.

 

Well, considering Knock Out and Starscream have been shown to not be completely evil, they aren't total monsters. 'Screamer's an asshole, yeah, but he has a since of gratitude (remember when he freed Arcee)? And Knock Out, well, he was genuinely friends with Breakdown.

Doesn't make them any less irredeemably evil, but they aren't on Megs' level. And nobody else in the show's as nasty as Airachnid and Silas.

 

That's true. All that confusing in-fighting and such. Though if you really want to split hairs, autobot actions led the things that caused their deaths, for example, the bots kill skyquake, so starscream tries to ressurect him, so dreadwing helps team prime and tries to kill starscream, thus Megatron kills him. There. How's that for redundant.

Edit:: technically over half the causalities were caused by autobots. Arachnid in stasis, then blown up, skyquake crash landing, and imposter wheel jack blown to bits.

 

I hate the idea of the Decepticon army being made up primarily of drones (or clones at the very least) like the Vehicons. I don't mind the Autobots being overwhelmed, but they should be overwhelmed by large numbers of unique characters, not just identical ones. It doesn't even make sense. What happened to Megatron's army? Why did his horde that he assembled as a charismatic leader disappear to be replaced by identical robots? And where did these identical mechs come from anyways? They'd better have a damn good explanation for this. Like something cool, though we all know that it was just because they didn't want to spend the money necessary to create the thirty or fourty decepticon warrior character models that would be necessary to overwhelm the Autobot forces.

 

Breakdown was pretty understanding to Fowler's/Vehicon's situation. That's two episodes. Other than that and being a nurse, he was just a mean, gung-ho thug. He had potential but that's Prime in a nutshell.

They acted like kids who get bullied everyday of their lives, someone else beats the bully for them, then they start kicking and spitting on him. Reinforced by Orion Pax part 3. Other than that one moment, they seem pretty harmless to me.

 

I'll have to say no on this one. I'd be annoying if the Decepticons stayed alive throughout a entire series or two. Move onto some new bad guys.