Construction Time Again

[Dominic]

Hell, most of the guys in Kaon would probably want the fights, as they would bring in some kind of economic activity.


When I mentioned "cost of construction", I was not talking about Megatron's payroll. I was talking about time and resource costs. Given the small number of Decepticons on Earth during AHM, it might not have been worth the effort to build and defend bases that were spread out over a wide area. Why build a mine if you cannot defend it, even assuming resources are available?

More Decepticons might show up later. But, until they do, construction projects would be wasted efforts.


Dom
-of course it would keep them busy.

[Sparky Prime]

When I mentioned "cost of construction", I was not talking about Megatron's payroll. I was talking about time and resource costs. Given the small number of Decepticons on Earth during AHM, it might not have been worth the effort to build and defend bases that were spread out over a wide area. Why build a mine if you cannot defend it, even assuming resources are available?

More Decepticons might show up later. But, until they do, construction projects would be wasted efforts.

I never said anything about payroll myself, and my point remains, cost really wouldn't be an issue or concern for the Constructicons here. They just follow their orders. As previously pointed out, the Constructicons are extremely efficient, capable of building something within a short amount of time and finding resources on Earth is easy. Particularly considering the Decepticons were fortifying Manhattan, they could easily re-use the resources the human had already developed there. Making a base on the island also keeps their efforts contained to a relatively small area rather than spreading out over a wide area, at least until they would be ready to expand out. And again, the humans didn't really pose them that much of a threat to worry about defending anything.

I also figure during AHM there must have been at least 35 Decepticons on Earth at the time, if not more. That's more than enough to justify some construction projects. Heck, the Infiltration units were usually smaller groups of around 6 and they still had a base of operations at least.

[andersonh1]

Particularly considering the Decepticons were fortifying Manhattan, they could easily re-use the resources the human had already developed there.

Wasn't there a scene early on where Mixmaster is examining the buildings, and talking about how soft and brittle (and therefore strange to him) the humans' construction materials were? They may not have found much to work with.

[Sparky Prime]

Wasn't there a scene early on where Mixmaster is examining the buildings, and talking about how soft and brittle (and therefore strange to him) the humans' construction materials were? They may not have found much to work with.

There were a couple times the Constructicons complained about human building materials being weak. Megatron didn't seem to care though. I think the Constructicons just prefer using stronger Cybertronian alloys to steel and concrete. They still had plenty of materials to work with in the middle of a city like that though.

[Onslaught Six]

To use an 'in-universe' point of reference, we saw in "Megatron: Origin" the Constructicons were in charge of building the huge battle arenas used for the Gladiator fights. It is mentioned that the arenas were always constructed the same day as the fights in order to keep locations a secret until the last possible minute. So if they could build something like that in less than a day, they certainly could have built several structures during the span of AHM.

The problem here is that Megatron Origin sucks.

[Sparky Prime]

The problem here is that Megatron Origin sucks.

That sounds more like a personal problem to me. Megatron Origin really isn't that bad of a story. And besides, as Mako pointed out, the Decepticons have been shown in other continuities to be extremely fast with construction as well.

[Mako Crab]

Wow, I know I started the topic, but this has really gotten into some interesting territory. I scanned over a few issues of AHM again after reading some of the comments here and I guess the Constructicons did put up that big space bridge. Megs was talking about creating a gigantic, universe spanning spacebridge network so they could show up anywhere, any time. So I guess there's that. But even though I may have been a tad mistaken in my original post (only a tad), there's still some great discussion anyway.

... Still, it might have been a good idea to fortify their position on Earth before building a space bridge. Just saying.

[andersonh1]

Wow, I know I started the topic, but this has really gotten into some interesting territory. I scanned over a few issues of AHM again after reading some of the comments here and I guess the Constructicons did put up that big space bridge. Megs was talking about creating a gigantic, universe spanning spacebridge network so they could show up anywhere, any time. So I guess there's that. But even though I may have been a tad mistaken in my original post (only a tad), there's still some great discussion anyway.

... Still, it might have been a good idea to fortify their position on Earth before building a space bridge. Just saying.

Megatron's comments throughout the story indicate that he genuinely believed that the Autobots were defeated all across the galaxy, and that they posed no further threat. The Decepticons did fortify against the human threat, which was the only one left as far as they knew.

[Dominic]

The Autobots were pretty well defeated. Everything we see during AHM indicates that Autobots are being scattered. There may be pockest of Autobots. There may even be a million or so Autobots. But, they are scattered and have no organization. The Decepticons do not seem to have much to do either.

Sixshot is reduced to chasing relatively unimportant guys like the Throttlebots. Autobot ships are being hacked. Communications are so bad that guys are finding each other, grateful to be rescued, only to realize that the other guys were also expecting rescue.


Now, the question is how we went from that at the end of AHM.....to the state of things in the ongoing. Maybe the Decepticons had a massively fratricidal conflict which let the Autobots recover. This is the most likely scenario. But, till Costa and co actually address it?

Will Optimus grow a pair? Will Magnus just do the sensible thing and execute Bumblebee and co? Read the "Transformers" ongoing series for all the answers....we hope.


Dom
-and the comics go on.....

[andersonh1]

Now, the question is how we went from that at the end of AHM.....to the state of things in the ongoing. Maybe the Decepticons had a massively fratricidal conflict which let the Autobots recover. This is the most likely scenario. But, till Costa and co actually address it?

I can't imagine that he wouldn't. But that's my guess as well, that the Decepticons have also broken up into factions, each following a different leader. Because there really is no one to step into Megatron's shoes and lead the entire army, whatever Starscream might think of himself. He's probably got his group, Razorclaw has his followers, etc. They've been too busy consolidating power to try and hunt down and exterminate the remaining Autobots.