Reproduction and Gender in TF Fanfic

I've found that my Transformers fanfiction is forming into its own little AU and that I've been doing a lot of world-building as a result. It's a pretty normal thing is this fandom since the actual canon is a contradictory mess and even asking "Which canon" is often no enough when playing in the sandbox. So I've been drawing from the G1 cartoons and comic, Beast Wars/Machines, Bayverse, Aligned/Prime, and the various IDW official and semi-official canons (semi-official meaning James Roberts' tweets). Some things though, still haven't been addressed to my liking though; specifically procreation.

( Rambling ideas about robot procreation under the cut )

So, that's my rambling. Serious rambling. And none of this is taking into the account of potential heat cycles that I'm currently contemplating playing with.