What is Dipstick's "redundant" alt modw? And if certain characters without mobile alt modes (Rewind, Rung, Soundwave, Blaster, Tripodeca, Amp/Kaon, Forestock/Vos, Mainframe, Diptstick, Ravage, Perceptor, Quark, etc) adopted vehicular or even animalian alt modes, what would they turn into?
Dear Alt-Mode Alarmist,
Dipstick is one of the few Triple Changers whose secondary alternate mode is a similar kind of vehicle as his primary one—in his case, he has the choice of becoming a three-wheeled truck or a four-wheeled car. Some have suggested that having an alt-mode considered “redundant”—the common label for such bots—is to blame for Dipstick’s ornery temperament, but never to his face.
As for the other bots you mention, let me see… Perceptor was also a Triple Changer, turning into either a microscope or a tracked vehicle. Soundwave gained a wheeled form after the end of the great war, adapted into an APC disguise upon his return to Earth. Blaster, at varying points in his life, was a hovercraft or a wheeled vehicle. Amp had a drill-tank mode, long before he became Kaon. Likewise "Forestock" only assumed his gun mode (and name) out of a desire to be useful to Megatron—before then, he was a forklift called Stockade.
The rest never adopted vehicular alt-modes in the specific universe I assume you are referring to. In a branch reality where Quark did not perish, he adopted a scientific exploration vehicle for an alternate mode. One Mainframe survived until the signing of the Pax Cybertronia, assuming a leonine alternate mode and changing his name to "Maneframe". For Rung, Tripodeca, Rewind, and Ravage, not having a vehicle form was very much part of who they were as people, and one must look far afield to find incarnations possessed of mobile alt-modes.
