Armada was the first Transformers series co-produced between American toy company Hasbro and its Japanese partner Takara, marking the start of a brand-new continuity with no ties to previous Transformers series such as the direct predecessor Robots in Disguise (Car Robots in Japan).

The series kicked off what fans call the 'Unicron Trilogy', being followed by two sequels, Transformers: Energon (2004) and Transformers: Cybertron (2005).

Production was affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks: the staff avoided depicting missiles to prevent evoking war imagery, and had characters defeated by energy beams rather than more painful-looking weapons, requiring changes to dialogue and background music interpretation.

Optimus Prime's Japanese name Convoy was originally planned to be voiced differently and his partner Mini-Con Sparkplug was originally going to be named 'Spark' in Japanese before the name was changed.

Thrust's Japanese name was originally planned to be 'Skywarp' before being changed for the final show.

The late Unicron story arc pays homage to The Transformers: The Movie, and the series marks the first time Unicron was ever made into a toy in the Transformers franchise.

Many of the show's characters are redesigns reusing the names and likenesses of characters from earlier Transformers series, giving Armada a high proportion of legacy-inspired designs despite being a fresh continuity.

Episode 48, in which Starscream sacrifices himself in a duel with Galvatron, was given special treatment in Japan: it is the only episode of the series whose title was not announced/read aloud in the broadcast.

Ultra Magnus was originally conceived not as a Transformer but as a 'Mini-Con base' facility, and the scenario was written around that concept; the late change to make him a full Transformer left little time to properly animate him, so his robot mode only appears in a couple of brief shots near the end of the series.

The Skyboom Shield was retroactively established as an ancient super-weapon, but it was originally designed simply as a flying vehicle formation before the 'strongest shield in the universe' backstory was added.

The toy for Smokescreen's upgraded form, Hoist, was originally developed as an entirely separate, unrelated character before the story was altered to make him a power-up version of Smokescreen, which is why the international toy releases of Smokescreen and Hoist still carry a setup implying they are two different individuals.

A Toys 'R' Us exclusive 'Limited Magna Convoy DX Set' included a final-battle-colored (dark blue) version of Optimus Prime's Super Mode, tied to his brief color change after emerging from inside Unicron.