Hello, Vector Prime! It's a pleasure to be communicating with you again! I'm curious; Why do the 'second-generation' Cybertronians look different in the Regeneration One universe and the Generation 2 comics universe?
Dear Jhiaxus Journeyman,
The exact means of self-propagation employed by the Cybertronian Empire varies depending on the universe. In the latter case, for instance, new Cybertronians were created through budding: while this ability was only ever developed as a temporary stopgap measure instituted by Primus to quickly grow Cybertron’s population, the citizens of the Cybertronian Empire perverted the process into a method to populate an aggressive, expansionist civilisation. This grew to the point where their collective “gene pool” developed a number of dominant phenotypes with multiple dominant traits, which they would pass on to their offspring when the time came to undergo the budding ceremony—these points of commonality were only increased by the fact that most Cybertronians of this universe adorned their armor with skulls and horns in honor of their master, the Liege Maximo.
In the other universe of which you speak, the Cybertronian Empire perpetuated their empire through the much safer science of spark-splicing—using the energy of one spark to ignite another. In this reality, however, the advanced technology of the Cybertronian Empire meant that many of their soldiers had evolved beyond the traditional limits of the Transformer frame.