Did anyone else notice that When Megatron is a fully functional robot, he's quite old school brute force, plundering Megatron. But when he was just a Head, he was all arogant and brilliant just like BW/BM Megatron. He was going on and on to himself and Sumdac about how inferior Sumdac's inventions were. He then proceeded to take the inventions to the next level.

Now that he has a body, WTF?!, he's relying on Sumdac?! On top of that, he's going out and plundering the things he needs like that Communications device from the Elite Gaurd. (yeah I know it's easier to steal than create but you get the point.)

My point is ever since he got the body, he still seems tactically superior to others but now, his scientific genius seems to disappeared.

He's having Sumdac construct a space bridge, what do you want.

Keep in mind that there is now less opportunity for the manipulative machinations he was able to pull off when the guy in charge of the largest robotics company in Detroit believed him to be benevolent. Now that his cover's blown, he's got to rely on his 'Cons to get what they need to build the Space Bridge, and they're not so much with the scheming. Not just in a "brain power" sense, but in a "get anyone to listen to them, even if they were smart enough to concoct a scheme" sense.

Maybe he's just enjoying having limbs again.

Meg's isn't just making Sumdac create the Bridge, He's getting that inferior brained organic to do everything scientific and then yelling at him when he cant deliver. If Megs is so smart and the Dr is dumb why'd he create the energy signal dampener? Something the Cons couldn't do for millions of years.

It seems like Megs in Head form would have just given Sumdac the schematics to everything he needs.

In all fairness, it's not like BW (and BM depending what cannon you follow) Megs didn't do his fair share of plundering.

Remember now, Sumdac reverse engineered a Transformer to make all those robots, it's his talent. Obiviously he knows what he's doing somewhat. Maybe megs just doesn't have a flippin clue how to make a space bridge on his own.. he might have an idea in his head, but not the know how. Signal Dampener thing can be best retconed with having the Decepticon Forces being scattered across the galaxy acting like rogues. Megs was the only one to try to attempt to unite them.. and if you got a lot of Cons in one spot, it might be a good idea to have a cloaking device.. espically if your building the aforementioned space bridge.

Well Megatron can't be all powerful or else there would be no way to explain how the autobots manage to drive him off Cybertron back during the Great War.

well they say, blind people have their other senses heightend. maybe people without bodies have their brainpower heightend

They explained that. The Autobots hid the AllSpark and had the use of Space Bridge tech. Which leads us to assume that neither Megatron or anyone else in the Decpticon army knows how to build a Space Bridge.

As for the original question, well prior to getting his new body Megs was essentially a helpless head. He had to use his wits to orchestrate his rise to power. Now he has a body with a kickass alt mode, swords, and a BFG.
And seeing as 'Screamer took down Magnus with one shot we can assume the Autobot Supreme Commander wouldn't last very long against Megatron. So he really doesn't have to use his wits to get what he wants.
Although he did manipulate the Constructicons.

Manipulating the Constructicons is as easy as it is to get a kid to do what you want. "After you clean up this mess, you can have a cookie."

I understand the importance of being able to move large amounts of troops great distances in a short amount of time. If the cons were attacking a colony or some other target in outer space, the bots could repel them by using the space bridge to send a massive amount of reinforcements to the battlefield near instaneously. However, that doesn't answer how the bots drove the cons from Cybertron in the first place. Then again, the fighting may not have first broken out on Cybertron.

Usually the result of war is that the victorious side claims territory. So if the Autobots won the war, they would've won territory - i.e.: Cybertron.

We saw this in G1 - Cybertron was originally dominated by the Autobots, ruled by the Autobot Council of Elders in Iacon and each Autobot City-State was also governed by regional Councillors. Then the Decepticons began conquering individual City-States one by one, finally conquering the City-State of Iacon thus seizing supreme control over Cybertron, driving the Autobots underground (e.g.: Emirate Xaaron and the establishment of Autobase) or off-world (e.g.: Fortress Maximus and the Autobot refugee crew of the Steelhaven).

So it seems that in Animated, the Autobots have dominion over Cybertron - obtained by defeating the Decepticons to the point of near extinction, which meant that surviving Decepticons would've been driven underground and/or off-world (so far all evidence points to the latter).

Getting back on topic, even as a disembodied head, Megatron was manipulating Sumdac into using his robotics genius to his advantage. He did this by feigning friendship with Sumdac (who aside from his robotics genius is a complete moron), e.g.: he got Sumdac to construct the Dinobots. Being hooked up to the resources of Sumdac Industries allowed him to do other things such as constructing Soundwave.

But yeah, as others have pointed out, he certainly still is plotting and scheming - most noticeably with the construction of a wormhole gateway (space bridge - only in the G1 comics has it ever actually been a real bridge, all other continuities have shown it as just a warphole generator) and he's still manipulating Sumdac into doing his dirty work - only that Sumdac is fully aware of it as Megatron's slave... KARMA'D!

Maybe he just stayed too long on the underground base and just getting little exposure to sunlight, so that's kinda mess up his mental.

Free labor is free labor

How about this.
Imagine Soviet Russia had Space bridge tech in the cold war.
Now imagine you speaking Russian right now.

Having superior manoeuvrability wins wars.

Люблю тебя всем сердцем*





*punch that through Google for a translation

In Soviet Russia Hornet loves you!