ClassicDrogn: The character fits reasonably well for power, and just needs a few tweaks to stay in canon. Much of wha tyou want to do is certainly doable, though you'ld have to muck the backstory a little. Suggestion: instead of some bizarre human-sized mockup of the Autobot Matrix, he stumbles across a significant chunk of handwavium just lying there. He's hiking through the woods maybe, or it shows up on his lawn. No explanation given. It wouldn't look like anything in particular, but could quite reasonably be having strange effects on the world around it. He takes it out of curiousity and starts tweaking with it - discovering that it grows when treated properly, and so forth. It's certainly reasonable for him to discover that, say, forming a few layers of tinfoil into shape over a piece of cardboard and then painting the lot with some of the more liquid parts of his batch leads to a strange sort of alteration that winds up with something thin, light, and very strong. He will also discover that it makes things work better. Oddly - but better. His household appliances are likely to become infected, with various results. He decides to build a full-scale model of a transformer with it - he's an obsessive fan like that, and he actually has enough mechanical skill to put something that vaguely resembles motors in all of the places that need motors, along with a rudemintary wiring system to control it to a degree via an internal setup that his laptop plugs into (enough to make it move in funny ways and impress any friends he might have.) About the time he's done building the thing, he starts hearing about handwavium, and how it Makes Things Better and Can Fly, puts two and two together, and pretty much pours the rest of his stash into his machine. It works better than he possibly could have imagined - it's a vehicle, it's a robot, it transforms. There are quirks, but he's riding the wave, and he deals with them happily. He takes the thing out for a spin or two, and it takes him a while to realize that he's upsetting people, with that whole walking around town as a giant robot thing. He's not damaging anything, but it's still bothering people. In the throes of wave-phobia, the norms call out the SWAT team. He turns to flee, one of the snipers gets twitchy, and a bullet slams into his vitals. That's bad. He makes good his escape, but it's a gut wound, and he's bleeding out. Fortunately, the entire structure he's in is so impregnated by handwavium that it's pretty much everywhere. A fair bit of it integrates in through the injury, staring up a change that takes him from Dying to Not Dying, performs Various Amusing Alterations on him, and knocks him into (blessed) unconsciousness for the duration.
You may feel free to have an AI if you wish - if you do have one, make sure to give it at least one personality quirk that is funny. Regardless, having a biomod with (Benefit - jacks directly into ship, perfectly comfortable staying in ship indefinately, given adequate supplies) (Penalty - becomes Very Unhappy Indeed when away from ship for longer than about a day) is entirely reasonable. A biomod to become One With The Ship is... plausible, given the inherent spaces you have to work with. It's on the unusual side, but it's certainly plausible. Finding a catgirl somewhere is certainly reasonable for the world we've got going - especially if you give him a bit of time on the run on the surface without a star drive. She's some poor soul who was fooled by the guacamole, fleeing on foot from frenzied 'Danes, and he shows up at the most dramatically appropriate moment for the save. It's a classic. There are no 'wave coilguns available to the general public - or even any that the general public knows about the *existence* of, but wave-reinforced ships are pretty impervious to hardtech attacks, and it would be entirely reasonable to have "especially tough armor" as a Cool Thing. From there, well, you have exceptionally tough armor, you have actual articulated limbs with usable hands at vehicle scale, with 'wavium-reinforced mechanical strength - make yourself relatively small and speedy, and you won't need any ship-to-ship weapons. You'll be plenty powerful in the local battlespace already, with a bit of creativity.
A triplechanger is probably a bit excessive, but the 'wave doesn't need jet engines to fly anyway. Stick with the basics. "Transformation with fully functional vehicle and robot forms" is a Cool Thing, and ought to have an appropriate quirk or two - again, the best quirks fall into the "funny/annoying" spectrum, with the annoyance likely pretty minimal in this case because the character just finds the whole situation So Damn Cool.
Suggested quirk: runs partially on the awe/approval of others: if he doesn't have at least a few random people either look at him and think he's cool or focus attention on him for a notable period of time every week or so, his top speed starts dropping (down to about a half or a third), his strength wanes and he starts feeling lethargic. This can be anything from terrifying badguys to impressing small children. In a pich, karaoke will do.
You'ld want another quirk or two after that, under the suggested build, but this one would certainly work.
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And remember.... There Is No 'Wave Motion Cannon.
well... unless the professor builds one.
in which case it would just cause handwavium-saturated obtects to move in funny but nondangerous ways (line dancing, for example) within the area of effect.
The collective facefault from all of the people who misunderstood him right up until the instant he fired it would be *priceless*.
You may feel free to have an AI if you wish - if you do have one, make sure to give it at least one personality quirk that is funny. Regardless, having a biomod with (Benefit - jacks directly into ship, perfectly comfortable staying in ship indefinately, given adequate supplies) (Penalty - becomes Very Unhappy Indeed when away from ship for longer than about a day) is entirely reasonable. A biomod to become One With The Ship is... plausible, given the inherent spaces you have to work with. It's on the unusual side, but it's certainly plausible. Finding a catgirl somewhere is certainly reasonable for the world we've got going - especially if you give him a bit of time on the run on the surface without a star drive. She's some poor soul who was fooled by the guacamole, fleeing on foot from frenzied 'Danes, and he shows up at the most dramatically appropriate moment for the save. It's a classic. There are no 'wave coilguns available to the general public - or even any that the general public knows about the *existence* of, but wave-reinforced ships are pretty impervious to hardtech attacks, and it would be entirely reasonable to have "especially tough armor" as a Cool Thing. From there, well, you have exceptionally tough armor, you have actual articulated limbs with usable hands at vehicle scale, with 'wavium-reinforced mechanical strength - make yourself relatively small and speedy, and you won't need any ship-to-ship weapons. You'll be plenty powerful in the local battlespace already, with a bit of creativity.
A triplechanger is probably a bit excessive, but the 'wave doesn't need jet engines to fly anyway. Stick with the basics. "Transformation with fully functional vehicle and robot forms" is a Cool Thing, and ought to have an appropriate quirk or two - again, the best quirks fall into the "funny/annoying" spectrum, with the annoyance likely pretty minimal in this case because the character just finds the whole situation So Damn Cool.
Suggested quirk: runs partially on the awe/approval of others: if he doesn't have at least a few random people either look at him and think he's cool or focus attention on him for a notable period of time every week or so, his top speed starts dropping (down to about a half or a third), his strength wanes and he starts feeling lethargic. This can be anything from terrifying badguys to impressing small children. In a pich, karaoke will do.
You'ld want another quirk or two after that, under the suggested build, but this one would certainly work.
------------
And remember.... There Is No 'Wave Motion Cannon.
well... unless the professor builds one.
in which case it would just cause handwavium-saturated obtects to move in funny but nondangerous ways (line dancing, for example) within the area of effect.
The collective facefault from all of the people who misunderstood him right up until the instant he fired it would be *priceless*.