Those Automated Units never worked for me, because there's a huge flaw in the idea behind them, namely, the
ship of Theseus.
So, I can use any old part to repair one of these bots and it will work. Arm, leg, brain, cooling system, whatever, and it will work. BUT I can't do it with the power supply. The power supply only works for one robot and one robot alone.
That just doesn't work.
So I have an automated Unit. I'll call him Bill. I decide to replace Bill's arm with a spare. I put the spare on and put the original arm on the bench. A little while later, I replace the other arm. Again, I put a spare on Bill and put the arm I remove on the bench. Then I replace his legs and all other components with spares, each time putting the components I remove on the bench. Eventually, the only part left of Bill that is original is the power core. Everything else is a replacement.
But if the power core can only work for one particular bot, how can it work for Bill when he's been almost entirely replaced? I have a bunch of parts sitting on my bench that I can assemble to form Bill, I'm just lacking the power core. The Bill who's currently walking around is not the original. It's a new body made up of new parts. How could it possibly work with Bill's power core? After all, what I've done is no different to using those spares to create a new body which is now called Bill - and this new body is using the power core designed for the bot made up of the spares sitting on my bench! So how then can it be that a power core works only for one bot when a bot can be almost entirely replaced until it is literally no different than constructing a new body with an old power core? If a power core won't work when it's put into a different body, why would it work when a new body is built around it piece by piece?
If they'd said that each brain required a particular power core to work, then it would be okay, because there are only a set number of combinations. Brain 1 with Powercore 1. B2 with P2. B3 with P3. And so on. If Bill is B1 with P1 and his powercore fails, you can't slap in P2, because it won't work with b1. But the writers never specified that, and so the idea behind them makes no sense.
