Overlord vs Bruticus

[Zippo]

I am just being curious, I have no intention of stirring anything up.

From my understanding Overlord is a phase sixer, and maybe more powerful than Megatron but probably not by a whole lot. He seems to be a lot more powerful than Bruticus leading to the idea that Megatron is more powerful than a combiner also which I don’t believe the case was in the G1 cartoons.

Is this a case of the power levels vary between different continuities or am I completely on the wrong track?

Where did Bruticus get ICBMs from? I don’t recall any of the Combaticons having that level of firepower.

[Overlord]

This is indeed a case of power levels varying by continuity!

Phase sixers are planetary destroyers. Now, it is probably a 'weak' planetary destruction, on the level of a cobalt bomb - i.e. raze the surface of the planet and render it uninhabitable for a few millennia, but still, a planetary destruction is a planetary destruction. It is said that Overlord set back an interstellar empire by 250,000 years¹ in just one battle, with only one Decepticon battalion to assist him. We're talking someone who is seriously an 'army of one'.

Overlord is stated to be powerful enough to make his Megatron sleep uneasily, and his Megatron even goes to the length of putting a virus in Overlord's head that makes Overlord unable to think of how to defeat Megatron... which implies that, without the virus, Overlord could indeed defeat Megatron.

One of the other phase sixers, Sixshot, gets into a man-on-man fight with Metroplex, who turns into a city, and Sixshot lives. I think anyone can agree that Metroplex would stomp Bruticus flat if Metroplex and Bruticus fought. So phase sixers have a power level that is on par with the city-Transformers, which means that a phase sixer spanking a combiner like Bruticus is pretty plausible.

So, the short answer is that Overlord is probably a whole lot more powerful than Megatron, particularly his own Megatron.

On the other hand, we've seen characters like G1 Optimus Prime take out combiners on their own via cleverness, grit, sheer determination, and generally imitating John McClane. (We've also seen Perceptor take out a combiner on his own. D: ) So it is possible that, on a good day, Megatron might be able to take out a combiner on his own. Megatron can draw on the power of a black hole, after all. It is worthwhile to note that Galvatron, who is a somewhat upgraded Megatron, utterly devastated Torkulon, such that it would take the survivors centuries to rebuild.

Onslaught has ICBMs. His ICBMs end up on Bruticus's back. "He can launch photon missiles, with a range of 6500 miles. Each missile contains three independently targetable shells, each of which has an explosive force equivalent to 3000 tons of TNT."

¹ As a note, if you knocked humanity back 250,000 years, archaic Homo sapiens would just be evolving and figuring out fire.