>>6342559late 1890s, give us loads of trains, biplanes and steam ships, and sailing ships.
Give us Rung, an older Rodimus, and relic seekers commanded by lockdown and Tarn's DJD, leave hearts of steel alone, and don't just do steampunk MTMTE, show us a world where Transformers HAVE to hide when around people, and give us a few villians that aren't decepticons OR humans. (aliens!)
if you have to, have a version of Nikola Tesla be the ally of the Autobots because he's fallen in love with a mechanical pigeon femme he caught one night and helped repair (Robotic Airazer) and have any humans encountered by the villians never truly meet them, due to either holo avatars or simply some of them turning into lab equipment (legends scalpel and perceptor!)
linewide gimmick should be weapons that can combine with parts of the robots like cybertron convoy's upgrades, or make armor parts for the smaller bots.
minimize the amount of regurgitated characters, if you need a dinobot, make it swoop or sl/aeiou/g or make a new one, take the chance to really fleshout the ideas of some of the less well known characters, and make then look either quite inhuman, or cleanly human with detachable workstations that combine into a larger complex.
IF you do any big big bots, make them be ones that need to be updated, like the molds that got used for machine wars.
