Combiner kibble: How to do it, and how much is too much?
Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2016 6:27 amSo the subject of combiner kibble and parts integration is something of a touchy topic here on Seibertron. It seems like whenever the topic is brought up, the discussion immediately goes pear-shaped. So, in an effort to encourage more...sensible discussion and to contain the potential drama to one thread, I thought I'd create a thread dedicated specifically to the subject.
So anyway, here's a little thought experiment for you. Suppose you're given a post as "engineering director" for a 3rd party combiner or set of hands and feet for an existing combiner (for the sake of argument we'll say it's one of the existing Scramble City style combiners with 5 members and separate hands and feet)- you don't actually do the engineering work yourself but you tell the engineers how to design the toy. So for example, you tell them "Make the feet turn into shields" and they figure out a way to do it. You're given free reign to make the combiner look and function however you want, with one condition- every single piece must do SOMETHING in every mode. It doesn't have to necessarily integrate into the robots (so just as an example the kibble could combine into a support drone) but it all has to do something.
I thought the PE sets worked out a pretty good way of doing it, but obviously it's not everyone's cup of tea, so here's another idea I came up with.
The feet would be largely static, with an articulated toe joint and a ball joint/ratcheted universal joint in the ankle. The peg to connect to the ankle would be 5mm, with a 2mm hole in it (like an Armada powerlinx port). When not in combined mode, the feet would transform a little (flipping out some stabilizer arms, nothing major) and a "gun turret" piece would peg onto the top via the 5mm ankle peg, thus transforming the foot into a mini gun emplacement. This gun turret piece would have flip-out 5mm pegs itself to allow it to connect to the combiner or be held by other robots when not pegged into the foot. The hands, meanwhile, would curl up into fists and would store in the bottoms of the feet, Quantron-style. To make up for the slight hollowness that this would necessitate, the feet would have rubber pads on the bottom and would have die-cast soles. This method, I feel, would be a fairly elegant solution to the "What to do with combiner kibble" problem, as it would allow the kibble to do stuff without having to actually integrate into the robots.
Anyway, your thoughts?
So anyway, here's a little thought experiment for you. Suppose you're given a post as "engineering director" for a 3rd party combiner or set of hands and feet for an existing combiner (for the sake of argument we'll say it's one of the existing Scramble City style combiners with 5 members and separate hands and feet)- you don't actually do the engineering work yourself but you tell the engineers how to design the toy. So for example, you tell them "Make the feet turn into shields" and they figure out a way to do it. You're given free reign to make the combiner look and function however you want, with one condition- every single piece must do SOMETHING in every mode. It doesn't have to necessarily integrate into the robots (so just as an example the kibble could combine into a support drone) but it all has to do something.
I thought the PE sets worked out a pretty good way of doing it, but obviously it's not everyone's cup of tea, so here's another idea I came up with.
The feet would be largely static, with an articulated toe joint and a ball joint/ratcheted universal joint in the ankle. The peg to connect to the ankle would be 5mm, with a 2mm hole in it (like an Armada powerlinx port). When not in combined mode, the feet would transform a little (flipping out some stabilizer arms, nothing major) and a "gun turret" piece would peg onto the top via the 5mm ankle peg, thus transforming the foot into a mini gun emplacement. This gun turret piece would have flip-out 5mm pegs itself to allow it to connect to the combiner or be held by other robots when not pegged into the foot. The hands, meanwhile, would curl up into fists and would store in the bottoms of the feet, Quantron-style. To make up for the slight hollowness that this would necessitate, the feet would have rubber pads on the bottom and would have die-cast soles. This method, I feel, would be a fairly elegant solution to the "What to do with combiner kibble" problem, as it would allow the kibble to do stuff without having to actually integrate into the robots.
Anyway, your thoughts?