can't they just be Transformers without all this other bullshit?

 

*sigh* I long for the more innocent days of 1984 when this was just a cartoon

That'd require nostalgia. Adults aren't allowed to have that.

It is funny to me how if these guys are all liquid metal and stuff, that they would still choose these relatively rudimentary forms, rather than something more... well, T-1000-ish.

Because organisms made out of "nanites" or "cells" on that scale would more effectively move about at that size as soft "tissue" over an endoskeleton?

wha?

Having an exoskeleton becomes increasingly inefficient to move around in the larger it is in size. Hence why all arthropods (insects, arachnids, crustaceans) don't come any bigger than they are.

 

And a creature made up of little "cells" or "nanites" wouldn't really need to look like a robot (or anything mechanical) in the macro scale. In fact, that would probably be disadvantageous.

let's put it like this:

transformers have a tendency to use their resources EXTREMELY inefficient, so they just use trans-scanning once or twice per planet. and mabye they don't just choose forms of apporiate mass, but forms that they find fammiliar? they ARE sentinent after all, so mabye they just try finding one that functions like their cybertronian modes? (NOT protoforms, they probably had altmodes on cybertron too, for transport)