can’t believe i’m quoting a transformers fanfic but here we are…

“Hang on,” Wheeljack said, “I’d worry about passive systems, not active. This mech wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about where he was going. I’d bet on some kind of system he wouldn’t be able to control at all—better yet, something that doesn’t rely on power or signal at all. Something he couldn’t rip out, or block by hiding—”

Hook and Scrapper had come over. “Exterior composition,” Scrapper said instantly. “I’ve thought of doing something of the sort for transport containers—stripe the cladding with varying amounts of a neutrino-scan-visible material for tracking, even underground. Megatron, if that’s the method they’ve used, we don’t have enough appropriate materials to block it. They’ll be able to locate him with satellite scanners, and they’re certainly sweeping for us already. We’ve got to dispose of him at once. Ideally, by melting him down.”

“Hey!” Ratchet stood up. “How about we don’t jump to slagging one of my patients!”

Hook stared at him as if he was insane. “What melodramatic nonsense. You’ve never even spoken to him!”

“He’s on my table, he’s my patient!” Ratchet said.

“Enough,” Megatron said. “Offer me a rational alternative, or shut up.”

Great, that wasn’t pressure or anything. “Fine, how about this: destroying him is stupid,” Ratchet said. “We still don’t know basically anything about this planet, we’ve nearly been taken down twice already, and now they know for sure we’ll be trying for the Excelsior, which means they’re going to be waiting for us there with everything they’ve got. We need intel, and he’s probably got it.” Megatron’s face didn’t change, but he kept listening, at least. “And we don’t need to cover him head to toe with palladium sheathing. We just need to make sure he doesn’t match the pattern they’re scanning for.”

“Well?” Megatron said to Scrapper.

“We’d have to isolate the material they used… but I suppose Mixmaster could analyze a panel of his frame,” Scrapper said grudgingly. “We could disguise him…”

“Except then they will find a pattern here that doesn’t match anything in their database,” Hook said.

“Yeah, but they can’t have a negative-match process,” Wheeljack put in. “They’re not energy-bound, right? They’re materials-bound. That’s why they—recycle instead of smelt down. Any one of their mechs is probably carrying a dozen old parts, and you’d get a negative match any place two patterns overlap. They probably just make sure each new mech gets at least some parts in a unique pattern, and that’s what they’ll be looking for.”

but if there’s also cameras everywhere then every time a negative match comes out then it just triggers the cameras to pick out those cars. best bet would be collectively agreeing to use one set of specific id for everyone, not a randomized id and thus unique id’s