How come in the comic things didn't change more in 4 million years.

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optimusskids
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How come in the comic things didn't change more in 4 million years.

Post by optimusskids »

A lot of people have probably seen back to the Future or Austin Powers.

So how come in the Marvel comic when Optimus and the Ark crew meet up with Perceptor , Blaster and co why hasn't more changed. It's been four million years , surely the non Ark crew should have changed so much to be unrecognisable plus there weaponry should be fairly antique.

Straxus "I can't believe your still using the Mark 4 black hole linked Fusion cannon. We all switched over to the Quadrillium powered Rad smashers 2 million years ago." KABOOM
bye bye Megatron

In reality Prime and crew would be one of those King Arthurs sleeping in a cave somewhere to save us all legends but without the magic sword and the equivalent of catapults as weapons.


Look at all the subsequent developments in technology

Wheeljack and Ratchet can't have made that much a difference.

Plus where did all the Con scientists go

The only official non G2 Con science types i can think of that were alive at the time of the Space Bridge. Were Shockers and Starscream and they'd been out of the picture for millions of years.
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Post by Halfshell »

Lots of things changed.

They developed Triple Changers, combiner tech, Pretenders...* the Decepticons crushed most of the Autobot resistance.

* - The Matrix implanted the notion of existing tech in Buster's mind. It's the only explanation for the Technobots. And there's nothing to say Scorponok invented Pretenders on the spot... helps to explain Bludgeon.
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Post by optimusskids »

True and I guess that would explain Thunderwing having his shell in the Magnificent 6
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Post by Cliffjumper »

I do sort of agree that four million years was a stretch - when you consider the impression we're given (admittedly on scant evidence) is the Decepticons have the upper hand right from the Ark launching (the Autobots lose a great military commander... the Decepticons lose a tit with a penis substitute on his arm). That the Decepticons never quite got round to routing out the last few is sort of questionable... but then Cybertron's massive in the comic (unless Unicron's attacking it).

You have to wonder where they all got the fuel from, TBH.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Why do you say "comic" anyway? You make it sound like things would've changed even more in the cartoon.
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Post by shadowsfm »

heres my point of view
1) they are so advanced, they have no room for improvements

2) the decepticons are built for war not research, while all the autoboths that cant fifgt, get killed off.


3) because these robots lived for hundreds of million years, 4 million is like 4 months to us

4) most of the survivers of the beginning of the civil war have a hard time dieing, because robots dont have vitel organs

you know what? that dont make much sence, dw g1 and idw make more sence
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Post by Tetsuro »

I guess that's a good point...decepticons not being scientists and thus halting development, that is. And with "small-minded tyrants like Straxus" (as Galvatron so well put it) in charge and rest of the planet in ruins and full of beggars, it's not hard to believe.
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Post by optimusskids »

War tends to be a catalyst for scientific and technological improvements.

Although a bit of Decepticon civil war would probably diverted resources from development

The Deceptions seem to lack scientists as such and seem to have a sub class of technicians and scientific types , I seem to remember with the affair of Straxus' head there being some kind of generic technicians.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

There's lots of poilitcal change in the time- The Decepticons effectively win the War and the remaining Autobots become underground terrorists. Then after that the Decepticons effectively break down into lots of little City State Armies with different leaders (Straxus, Scorponok, Thunderwing ect- all a convienient way of dealing with the seemingly confusing leadership progression in latter issues which is a bonus as well).

I guess it just seems a lot happened compared to the cartoon...
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Originally posted by shadowsfm
3) because these robots lived for hundreds of million years, 4 million is like 4 months to us


The problem with this sort of thing (and while DW came up with a good solution to the gap, I'd take the Marvel stories any day of the week) is the astonishing mortality rate after the arrival on Earth - I'm not just talking about the immediate events, but across about a decade anywhere up to a couple of hundred 'name' TFs get killed off (and often only revived through considerable effort - Nucleon and so on). Multiply that by 400,000 (on top of the fact that those killed from 1984 on seem to be largely the cream), and any war of attrition would need a truly gargantuan population. Sure, they could live for 4 million years, the lifespan's pretty inarguable. But live at war for four million years? Pffff.

Mind, the G2 comic made an attempt at explaining some of it, but there's still no real explanation for why the Decepticons never quite got round to wiping out the Autobot resistance.

Big shame "the gap" didn't receive more attention from Furman, especially later on for the UK stuff, when he instead decided to just **** up the present day stuff.

This, incidentally, is why the cartoon must logically be ignored in terms of this discussion... however sketchy some areas of the comic are, the cartoon's "bigger picture" is simply laughable by comparison.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Well what would you expect? In the cartoon, Cybertron was seemingly inhabited by no one but Shockwave, an army of his drones and some obnoxious fembots.

Oh yeah, and some old geezer named Alpha Trion.
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Post by Wildrider »

Pus there's the interesting point of how long a year is in cybertonian terms, a calendar year is determined via the orbit of a planetary body around another, in Earth's case our sun. Cybertron is in Primus's husk alot of the time, would he be a stationary body or would he correct his orbit before settling down?

Cyberton had no sun, cybertron has no concievable rotation, or a documented calendar (That I'm familiar with) year comparable with our own. I'm sure our beloved RPG had a summary of earth time to cybertronian time somewhere, and a conversion table but I can be damned if I can find it.

I'd be curious to know what the conversion rate of one earth year was to a cybertronian year, whereas the introduction is told from a narrative to an 'earthen' audience (Ok I'm stretching here), so maybe it's concievable that 4 million earth years is comparable to the hundred years war or something.

I think four months and even a hundred years war may be a little short by comparison, dunno, what do you think?

EDIT: Hmm upon thinking after posting I found various pieces of inofrmation one being a Cybertronian Vorn apparently being to eighty three earth years, so that leaves us only 48, 000 (rounded down) cybertronian years to account for. Which when you compare Cybertons lack of evolution compared to ours in 1000 years, it's a bit of a sticky wicket. Although it's tough to examine evolutionary patterns or lack of with a technological race of machines, you'd expect them to learn quickly, but they're not computers, well they are, but not in a super compute way, except for Computron and he took aaaaaaggges to work stuff out.

Oh well, erm...................................*runs away*
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Regardless of how long the Earth year is on a Transformer timescale, four million of them is a long time for a war to go on when they die so easily in under a decade after Earthfall.

Let's take Crankcase (or is it Ruckus?) as an example... we know he's a contemporary of Megatron from "Flames of Boltax", and that he lasts, say, 4,001,989 years on Cybertron without getting terminal damage. he then takes a shuttle flight to Earth, and he's dead within five years (and at the hands of cannon fodder like Jhiaxus' goons to boot).

The other absurdity the 4 million year gap throws up is that of experience... Someone like Bumblebee would be fighting on Cybertron for an undetermined period of time, with enough to distinction to wangle a detail on the Ark (though it was a bit silly of Prime to take his best warriors to go shoot some rocks, wasn't it?). Cue four million year dirt nap. Then he comes back to life, dies twice more in the space of about five years, stumbles back to Cybertron and he's a bally hero. What about, I dunno, Override, who's been fighting the Cons for four million plus years? To survive that, he'd have to be harder than all the Ark crew put together. But no, he zips off to Earth and Megatron (who spent four million years in bits on the Ark's floor) simply pulls him in half...
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Post by Halfshell »

This thread reminds me I must get on and finish [start, whatever] my big ol' fanfic set in "The Gap" which explains absolutely everything and is well awesome.

I keep seeing things noted and thinking "but that's a point I'm covering!" and then remembering it's never really gotten past the outline / beat-sheet stage...
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Post by Wildrider »

Hehe Yeah my time theory is fatally flawed I ended up arguing with me sen then.

Hmm Maybe unless you could explain the poor evolutionary rate by the continuous reincarnations of transformers in some way. Junkions are derived from transformers are they not? Maybe their idiot savant methods of putting things back together are born out of 4 million years of reconstructive surgery to fix up the troops and wheel them back out. Such was the repetetive and complex work of battlefield surgery that it's now ingrained into their programming? (Bumblebee to Goldbug for instance)

There can only be limited amount of resources so a policy of recycling would make sense, patching up the troops that have been 'killed'. I mean Ruckus for example got 99% destroyed bar his voice box and brain thing and spakamajig and he was still fighting. So with such limited resources they would try and make every soldier count, a lack of suicial attacks, perhaps just a stalemate played out over no man's land with neither side willing to risk extinction for victory might explain the low mortality rate,

So 'we can rebuild you' , over and over and over again, may be a reason I guess. Plus with this 'learned' ability to patch up nearly expired troops it may explain the longevity of some espicially if they had a dedicated military hospital or something (Wheeljack's Lab etc) and perhaps the raised mortality on earth and the lack of dedicated medic working in unison. And maybe like so many other technologies, the art of life saving surgery was lost in the chaos of war.

So the answer is Junkions. *nods*
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Post by Jaynz »

Originally posted by Tetsuro
Why do you say "comic" anyway? You make it sound like things would've changed even more in the cartoon.


Well, in the cartoon, Shockwave DID promise that 'Cybertron shall be as you leave it', and took that WAY to fargin' literally.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Originally posted by Wildrider
So with such limited resources they would try and make every soldier count, a lack of suicial attacks, perhaps just a stalemate played out over no man's land with neither side willing to risk extinction for victory might explain the low mortality rate


Hmmm... only problem I'd have with that is that the situation on Cybertron is never really a stalemate - the Decepticons spend a considerable amount of time at a massive advantage. I don't really buy the "every Decepticon leader was always lazy and complacent" riff either... Trench warfare to the power of a million I could see, but trouble is that's not what we're shown. The amount of Transformers would be finite (seeing as the comic largely stuck with the "You need the Matrix" thing rather than "A giant clumsy T-Rex robot can build these toasters" thing), so I agree that repairing would be the thing (as it largely was on Earth, where only a few dozen are actually built), but even taking guerilla warfare as the Autobot tactic, casualties would mount up, spares and other resources would run low, belief would ebb away and so on.
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Post by RUNAMOK »

It would be very logical to do evrything you can to save the troops you have, especialy when that what is needed to create new troops, the matrix, is stranded on earth.

Edit: cliffy came with this.....now i need to think on something new.

Edit2: Does anyone remember the middle years and Trannis' rule of cybertron
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Originally posted by RUNAMOK
It would be very logical to do evrything you can to save the troops you have, especialy when that what is needed to create new troops, the matrix, is stranded on earth.


It's logical to do to so on Earth when they fire the Matrix off into space in a moment of abject stupidity. It doesn't seem to stem the flow of casualties, though, does it?

It's plainly logical not to get killed, it doesn't make it a particularly easy thing to avoid in a four million year war.
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Post by optimusskids »

How did those on Cyberton build new troops wirthout the Matrix

I'm trying to remember if Magnus was newly trained or newly built for operation Volcano.
Also were the Autobot triple changers newly built or some kind of conversion or brain swap.
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