Trans Formers The End

[primenova]

In line with the Marvel "The End" comics [which some didn't really seem to work seeing that the whole point was that this is the last ever story featuring Wolverine, Fantastic Four {all mutants dead}, X-men {3 series to complete story} but had the character still round to have more adventures after this one]

Should a "The End" book end with the characters being killed?
So being the last ever -- story.

But how would you do a Transformers one? Go a long the line of Peace?

[Nigel]

Unicron's back for the final showdown. The Transformers unite on Cybertron against the Chaos Bringer, defeating him, but only just and not without great loss. But

SPOILER: Click to show

the Transformers are so busy fighting Unicron on one hemisphere that they fail to notice Galactus coming from the other direction, who destroys the planet and the Transformers along with it. Possibly Wheelie is the sole Transformers to make it out alive, because he's a survivalist.

The end.

[Andy Turnbull]

I shouldn't really be giving this away as I've not finished drawing it yet but here it is anyway.

Trans-Formers: The End by Andy Turnbull

1. CYBERTRON. As seen from space, but this is a Cybertron at the end of it's existence. The world is dark and all around the stars are fading. It's not just the end of Cybertron but soon the end of all things.

2. Closer in on Cybertron now and we see the shadowed outlines of a city scape, it's a mix of brand new architecture and burnt out ruins. Again, it's dark there are no lights at all. The energon is gone.

3. Big image. It's a PRIME (Transtech Optimus Prime is my preference), damaged and pock-marked as much as the planet he bears the scars of the war. He is half kneeling, half falling on to the ground. The ground itself is entirely composed of the corpses of many transformers. Some recently deceased, others covered in a patina or rust suggesting they have been there a long time. His chest is cracked and exposed and we can see the CREATION MATRIX inside. Similar to the first two panels it is very much dark, only a dim light from Prime's optics and the Matrix allow us to see anything.

4. Close in on Prime's head he has fallen forwards onto the ground and the light in his optics has just blinked out and the last transformer has died.

PRIME: until all are one...

THE END

[The Doctor]

'Peace' already ticks the boxes for the last Transformers story, for me. And that was only a handful of pages.

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

For me the best ending is US #80's "We can go home." Not a great issue overall, but the right note to go out on.

A good conclusion to a story should, I think, have strong links to the beginning, e.g. Hobbits returning to the place they began their journey, Arthur throwing Excalibur back to the Lady of the Lake, Babylon 5 being decommissioned and demolished, etc.

So for Transformers, where we began with war beginning on Cybertron, and Prime and Prowl leaving the homeworld, it ends with the war being ended, peace coming to Cybertron, and Prime and Prowl returning home at last.

I wouldn't have done everything the same. I'd have had Ratchet sacrifice himself to kill Megatron, Shockwave, Starscream and Galvatron, but I wouldn't have had Galvatron come back and be defeated by Spike and Fort Max, which was rather pointless. Would probably have done something instead with Buster and Bumblebee, maybe paying tribute to Ratchet or somesuch.

Martin

[legios]

Sometimes I like a circular ending, where you cycle back to the issues that opened the story (the last episode of "Firefly", which comes back to the issue of family and loyalties that opened the series), and some times it seems appropriate to have a more open ending. What sort of ending I would do for "Transformers" would depend on what frame of mind I was in when I was doing it. My natural inclination at the moment would lean towards an ending where evil was vanquished and tranquility restored. I'd probably inlude a hint of an open element to the ending, with humanity coming to terms with these alien robots and establishing formal diplomatic relations with them. A new era in the making feels like a time to step away and leave a reader wondering what would come out of that.

As to a downbeat ending..... "Peace" already exists, so there wouldn't be much point in me attempting one to be honest. It has already been done far better than I could.

Karl

[The Doctor]

OT: The ending of the Robin Hood mythos is my favourite ending with the firing of the arrow to signify where he should be buried, etc.

-Ralph

[Andy Turnbull]

Ragnarok for me from the prose Edda. Where the old gods die and leave a new generation to carry on, free from what has gone before.

Andy

[charlesrocketboy]

I think I'd go with Peace too.

My second preference is the end of Earthforce - not the story itself, but the idea of a normal story and the words The War Goes On. The comic's over but the characters are still around, they're still having adventures.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I give Peace 0/10 - it does nothing for me whatsoever as a conclusion worthy of attention: it doesn't feature the major characters from the saga whose stories I am interested in, it's not believable for me in terms of characters' behaviour, and it doesn't resolve anything. As it only features a dozen secondary characters, the events it describes wouldn't be marked looking back in a history of the planet Cybertron. Also, it's bleak and negative - bleah!

It's like, half-way through an imaginative real-time saga, someone decided they would take a few of the current cast (whose teams would be unlikely to still be intact five centuries later, especially with everyone else having been killed), make them the last robots standing, so there must be something about them that shields them from death, and then suddenly have them turn on each other and die by single shots to the chest.

The only way I get any satisfaction from Peace is if I tack a page on the end in which the Wreckers and Technobots finish each other off quickly (and Rodimus too if they like) and all the other survivors come out, look down at them, tut-tut, say good riddance to bad rubbish, and set about the rest of their lives.

I agree about the ending of Robin Hood though, with the arrow - great stuff.

Martin

[Andy Turnbull]

Sept 18, 2008 6:53:27 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

I give Peace 0/10 - it does nothing for me whatsoever as a conclusion worthy of attention: it doesn't feature the major characters from the saga whose stories I am interested in, it's not believable for me in terms of characters' behaviour, and it doesn't resolve anything. As it only features a dozen secondary characters, the events it describes wouldn't be marked looking back in a history of the planet Cybertron. Also, it's bleak and negative - bleah!

I know it's a bleak and negative ending but it rings more true than any other potential ending for the Trans Formers. Every single development and advancement of their race that we see during the run of stories is geared primarily for war - nothing else. (With the exception of Spanner and The Space Bridge) They are a warrior race and eventually they will either war within themselves to the point of annihilation or join up and bring war to the Universe in the name of one cause or another until they are either a) successful or more likely b) get wiped out by a superior power/coalition of lesser races.

It's like, half-way through an imaginative real-time saga, someone decided they would take a few of the current cast (whose teams would be unlikely to still be intact five centuries later, especially with everyone else having been killed), make them the last robots standing, so there must be something about them that shields them from death, and then suddenly have them turn on each other and die by single shots to the chest.

The choice of characters is a typically short hand method for audience indentification. After all the book is still a toyline tie in and a story with the future descendants of Transformers would be a tough sell for licensor approval. A version of Peace written now would have a greatly different cast but would keep the same tone and overall story. I do agree with you though, the inclusion of the cast does damage the story a little. After all the Autobots elite commando unit The Wreckers would have had a fairly high turnover of personnel over the centuries. Though it's no more annoying than having the twenty years in the future timeline. Every time you saw a character in that you knew they would have to survive until that point. It was a good idea to have Galvatron and co introduced during Target: 2006 but the trips to the future afterwards were something of a mixed blessing.

Andy

[primenova]

The one thing with Peace is showing how the Decepticons won - by just using one of them they turned the remaining Autobots in to war loveing bot.

& they didnt even need Grimlock there [just image how much worst it would have been with the Dinobots]. But that wasn't a real ending just showing Rodimus's worst nightmare come true. That the one thing Hot Rod wanted was taken away from him again by his own troops.

[charlesrocketboy]

Sept 18, 2008 6:53:27 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

Also, it's bleak and negative

Well, yeah, it's the end story of a race of beings who've been at war for over four million years and never stopped despite all the chances they had in which they could. A happy ending is not likely.

[Nigel]

Sept 18, 2008 11:38:22 GMT Andy Turnbull said:

Sept 18, 2008 6:53:27 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

I give Peace 0/10 - it does nothing for me whatsoever as a conclusion worthy of attention: it doesn't feature the major characters from the saga whose stories I am interested in, it's not believable for me in terms of characters' behaviour, and it doesn't resolve anything. As it only features a dozen secondary characters, the events it describes wouldn't be marked looking back in a history of the planet Cybertron. Also, it's bleak and negative - bleah!

I know it's a bleak and negative ending but it rings more true than any other potential ending for the Trans Formers. Every single development and advancement of their race that we see during the run of stories is geared primarily for war - nothing else. They are a warrior race and eventually they will either war within themselves to the point of annihilation or join up and bring war to the Universe in the name of one cause or another until they are either a) successful or more likely b) get wiped out by a superior power/coalition of lesser races.

Peace rather echoes Space Pirates, where Ultra Magnus and Soundwave, having defeated the Quintessons together, converse (to paraphase), "look what we can achieve together, but too much has happened for this to end peacefully".

[Grand Moff Muffin]

The Magnus/Soundwave bit in Space Pirates didn't ring true for me either.

From all I've read of TFs, I don't think they're any more warlike than humans. We always have wars on somewhere in the world, we spend loads on the technology of war, and we cause a lot of damage to the planet. We expand, we colonise, we dominate, etc.

But most of us don't spend most of our time at war, and all our wars end sooner or later. The bitterest enemies make peace and can be staunch allies later on when another war starts.

TFs live longer than us, they advance more slowly, their wars are longer, but most of the characters we get to know well are all rounded characters, with other interests besides war. Many are delinquents, many have been indoctrinated, but most have the potential to grow and learn and change. And they lived for ages in peace and prosperity before the war.

I'm sure many of the Cyberformed worlds in the Empire are at peace (albeit on the land of other races they wiped out - like us).

'Peace' would only ring true for me if the last robots standing were mindless drones rather than actual people.

Another thing - most writers focus on the war stories, because they are exciting. We hardly ever get to see what they get up to when they're not fighting - which could be having other equally interesting adventures. I'd like to see more non-war TF stories showing the bigger picture.

Martin

[The Doctor]

I too would have liked to have seen more non-war stories.

'Peace' works for me as an ending to a mostly war orientitled comic title. It's not the ending I'd want (I'd rather everyone was happy), which is exactly why I think it's the appropriate ending, if that makes sense. It really shocked me back in the day. It's thematically right, whether I like it or not.

It wouldn't work for other versions of Transformers. For instance, such a grim ending to, say, the 'Robots in Disguise' cartoon would have been horribly jarring as that was a more comedy focussed version of the toy line.

-Ralph

[charlesrocketboy]

Sept 18, 2008 16:39:27 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

But most of us don't spend most of our time at war, and all our wars end sooner or later. The bitterest enemies make peace and can be staunch allies later on when another war starts.

That does undermine the idea they're not more warlike than us though - the Transformers are spending most of their time at war, the war continues past the point when humans would've given up (there's barely anything left of Cybertron to fight over), and there's no civilian population outside of the Empties.

Even in really nasty and brutal war zones, there isn't one side living out of the only remaining city with no civilians there at all (except for homeless people who they actively massacre) and the other side lives in the sewers.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Sept 18, 2008 17:09:13 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

Sept 18, 2008 16:39:27 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

But most of us don't spend most of our time at war, and all our wars end sooner or later. The bitterest enemies make peace and can be staunch allies later on when another war starts.

That does undermine the idea they're not more warlike than us though - the Transformers are spending most of their time at war, the war continues past the point when humans would've given up (there's barely anything left of Cybertron to fight over), and there's no civilian population outside of the Empties.

I'm afraid don't accept your assumption that they are spending most of their time at war, nor that there's no civilian population outside of the Empties.

We only get to see the brief moments that they are fighting, not the long periods in between.

And most of the time when they fight, they don't kill or permanently damage each other, so it's not as fierce/dangerous as human wars.

Who said there's no civilian population outside of the Empties? They may be the only civilians not working within Decepticon laws in Polyhex, but Straxus' regime had plenty of non-military workers keeping the city running - the tiny Autobot Resistance would not have tied up the whole population in warfare, and they weren't fighting anyone else. Plus, that was only one little bit of Cybertron. What about the area we saw in 'The Fall and Rise of the Decepticon Empire', where Autobots roamed unmolested until Megatron and Ravage arrived, and those friendly to the Deceps just sat around watching gladiatorial sports?

I would say that for most of the 4,000,000 years, most of the population of Cybertron were civilians employed by the Decepticon dictatorial regime - which was a military regime, but with the Autobots driven into hiding it was not geared for war en masse, as there was hardly any enemy. War was probably not on the minds of most of the workers.

And in the Empire, most civilisations were defeated so easily that most of the robots were probably colonists, builders, engineers, etc., and hardly any of the time would they consider themselves to be at war with anyone. Those destined to stay on the conquered planet would never see a shot fired for the rest of their lives.

It would actually be counterproductive for the settlers to have aggression in their programming. It was never hinted at that the worlds in the Empire were in constant uprising and anarchy.

Martin

[charlesrocketboy]

Sept 18, 2008 17:50:30 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

I'm afraid don't accept your assumption that they are spending most of their time at war, nor that there's no civilian population outside of the Empties.

It's not really an assumption - it's what the comic shows. I cannot recall seeing any civilian Transformers, outside of flashbacks to the early war, in any story who weren't Empties (with the exception of Spanner and look what happened to him!), and most of the time they're shown at war. The times when they're not are presented as unusual and not the norm, and the characters express distaste and grief at the endless war.

It doesn't make much sense that there'd be no large civilian population, but we never see one and there's none mentioned - and if there are, where are they living? Almost all the cities we see on Cybertron are abandoned and devastated.

What about the area we saw in 'The Fall and Rise of the Decepticon Empire', where Autobots roamed unmolested until Megatron and Ravage arrived, and those friendly to the Deceps just sat around watching gladiatorial sports?

I don't remember it saying they were friendly to the Decepticons - I remember it saying they were the Decepticons, and they were getting fed up of not being out there killing Autobots and conquering things.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Sept 18, 2008 18:04:59 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

Sept 18, 2008 17:50:30 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

I'm afraid don't accept your assumption that they are spending most of their time at war, nor that there's no civilian population outside of the Empties.

It's not really an assumption - it's what the comic shows.

Yes, because it's a war comic. There's always shooting in westerns, but that's because they only show the days when there's shooting. The TF comics only follow the lives of the soldiers. When Perceptor and Blaster attacked Polyhex the Deceps were surprised because most days they didn't have anyone attacking them. Also, only military personnel got sent to Earth.

I cannot recall seeing any civilian Transformers, outside of flashbacks to the early war, in any story who weren't Empties (with the exception of Spanner and look what happened to him!), and most of the time they're shown at war.

We did see some, e.g. workers at the energy plant with Octane, when Prime and Magnus attacked. The robots at Maccaddams. Many of the robots with Decepticon badges may be civilians working for the Government. They can't mostly be warriors, because (a) there aren't enough Autobots to fight, and (b) the infrastructure needs workers to keep it going. Name one military regime in Earth history, with a small minority of terrorists or freedom-fighters causing them problems, where you can honestly say most of the population are soldiers.

The times when they're not are presented as unusual and not the norm, and the characters express distaste and grief at the endless war.

Yes, again because we only follow the soldiers (and army medics and scouts and spies and whatnot). And as you say, many of the soldiers don't like soldiering.

It doesn't make much sense that there'd be no large civilian population, but we never see one and there's none mentioned - and if there are, where are they living? Almost all the cities we see on Cybertron are abandoned and devastated.

We see plenty of intact or semi-intact buildings with the lights on. The planet may be sparsely populated, but there are also all those subsurface levels.

What about the area we saw in 'The Fall and Rise of the Decepticon Empire', where Autobots roamed unmolested until Megatron and Ravage arrived, and those friendly to the Deceps just sat around watching gladiatorial sports?

I don't remember it saying they were friendly to the Decepticons - I remember it saying they were the Decepticons, and they were getting fed up of not being out there killing Autobots and conquering things.

Yes, but they had spent a long time not fighting before they decided they wanted to fight again.

Another example - remember when Flame's engine exploded and smelted a load of robots? I'd say they were civilians.

In parts where the Autobots were evenly matched with the Deceps, such as where Fort Max resided, I'll grant you most robots are probably drafted into one or other army. But where one side is puny compared to the other, it would make no sense.

I felt I didn't need to be told that most of Straxus' people were civilians, nor shown them, because I felt it went without saying, on account of it making no sense to have everyone in one big standing army with no enemy for most of them to fight, and no robots assigned to support the crumbling (because now underpopulated) infrastructure, and also because there was no plot reason to show them.

Martin

[Andy Turnbull]

Sept 18, 2008 18:21:44 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

Sept 18, 2008 18:04:59 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

It's not really an assumption - it's what the comic shows.

We did see some, e.g. workers at the energy plant with Octane, when Prime and Magnus attacked.
Martin

I'm pretty sure that they were slaves as opposed to workers. Polyhex looked to have been built and maintained by a slave class toiling under the Decepticon ruling classes.

Andy

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Sept 18, 2008 18:37:46 GMT Andy Turnbull said:

Sept 18, 2008 18:21:44 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

We did see some, e.g. workers at the energy plant with Octane, when Prime and Magnus attacked.
Martin

I'm pretty sure that they were slaves as opposed to workers. Polyhex looked to have been built and maintained by a slave class toiling under the Decepticon ruling classes.

Yes, the workers were slaves. It was a military regime, not a free society, so most of the civilians would be slaves. More useful and co-operative ones would probably have had better lives, but they would still be slaves in a sense or end up like Spanner.

But my point is that most are not war-mongers.

When Megatron and Trannis conquered Cybertron's cities, they killed vast numbers, but they wouldn't kill those that surrendered, since their army needed a civilian/slave infrastructure, first to power the war effort, and then, when the Autobots were virtually all gone, to keep the underpopulated cities wheezing on. At this point, the Deceps could kill some for fun when they felt like it, but they'd have to keep many more of them alive.

The Autobots wanted to free the slave society, but no doubt killed many neutrals themselves in their attacks.

On well-designed Empire worlds which never saw civil war, all the peaceful citizens probably subscribed to the Empire's philosophy, had decent lives, and would be hard to class as slaves unless you argued that their minds were enslaved because they had been blinded to the evil done by their warriors on the Empire's frontiers.

Martin

[dyrl]

In this discussion, I mostly agree with Martin's sentiments, so I see no need in repeating them.

For my part, I will just say that IT NEVER ENDS! ...Or: I hate "endings" - time and existence are perpetually in motion; there is no end and so I have never been terribly interested in writing or reading "endings."

pete

[legios]

Sept 18, 2008 18:04:59 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

It's not really an assumption - it's what the comic shows. I cannot recall seeing any civilian Transformers, outside of flashbacks to the early war, in any story who weren't Empties
[\quote]

I have to come down on the opposite side on this one. As the saying goes "lack of evidence is not evidence of lack" - if the comic did not show us a civilian population that is not actual proof of their non-existence. The comic only provides a very limited snapshot of what is going on Cybertron-wise (inevitably - planets are very large places and conditions probably vary quite considerably from area to area).

I am with Ralph on the fact that "Peace" feels thematically appropriate to me - "Transformers" was fundamentally a war story and so - in terms of a downbeat ending - "Peace " works quite well for me. I can believe that that surviving Autobots would be so hardened to violence that they would turn to it at very slight provocation. I'm not saying that it is my preferred ending to the comic story, or even that it is the only viable one. But if I were looking for a downbeat ending then the idea of it is very much in the centre of the ball-park I would search. (I do like Andy's thoughts though, that kind of "not a bang but silence and echoes" kind of thing)

(I'm not saying that I would by nature want an unhappy ending. My own instincts most of the time are more in the region of US#80 or the ending of Beast Machines.)

(And to go a little Off Topic - the proper ending of the Robin Hood myth is definitional, and it is a crying shame that so few adaptations actually go all the way to the end. I'm also quite partial to Arthur's removal to Avalon as well - it has that sense of something of great value passing from reality and leaving behind its tale and shadow. Prefer Robin Hood's exit though.)

Karl

[karla]

i've never understood why cybertron was so densely populated either, or why there were so many transformers...where do they come from anyhow?

yes, yes the peace idea lovely one! I think they should have pets as well
but wasn't there a comic that resulted them in ending in peace?

[charlesrocketboy]

Sept 18, 2008 18:21:44 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

Yes, because it's a war comic

War comics do usually mention civilian populations, show them, have the characters talk about what they'll do at home, etc. We get none of that in Transformers.

We did see some, e.g. workers at the energy plant with Octane, when Prime and Magnus attacked

They were slaves though. I'll give you the Maccaddams robots - though Maccaddam's itself undermines the idea of a civilian Cybertron, because why go to the same bar the other side drinks at unless there's very little competition?

Name one military regime in Earth history, with a small minority of terrorists or freedom-fighters causing them problems, where you can honestly say most of the population are soldiers.

I cannot name a single military regime in Earth history that bore any resemblance to the comic Decepticons - you had multiple commanders running things out of a single city or base, and never talking to each other or working together.

Which is also as unrealistic and makes as little sense as the idea of no civilian population at all, but that's what's in the comic - no signs of civilians, and two factions that seemed to be massively splintered.

I'm going with the conclusion Eugenesis went with: Cybertron's been reduced to two small armies because everyone else has been killed. (You have to hope Optimus used the Matrix a lot between G1 and G2 to create some new Transformers)

[legios]

Sept 18, 2008 22:22:46 GMT karla said:

i've never understood why cybertron was so densely populated either, or why there were so many transformers...where do they come from anyhow?

Made by means of the the Creation Matrix. (Or in early times by biomorphic replication per G2). Why the Transformers feel the need to replicate in such numbers is unclear (given their likely lifespans in a time of peace there seems to be little need from them to "breed" in significant numbers). It maybe something that is programmed into the base code-line (whether that be by Primus, Quintessons, or someone the Quints half-inched the Matrix from) for reasons unclear.

(Of course if you prefer the Sunbow cartoon's way of telling things then they just get built randomly whenever someone feels like it, and there aren't very many of them - one Decepticon on Cybertron, a half-dozen Autobots and some blokes on Earth. But that is the Sunbow'verse so I don't pay that much mind).

Karl

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Here's an idea for a story plot:

- Up until 1991, the ruling Decepticons on Cybertron oppressed the useful members of the civilian population (and smelted the non-useful ones when they could get their hands on them).

- In 1991, Primus/Xaaron transported the Autobot and Decepticon armies to a particular spot on the surface and rallied them to defend the planet from Unicron.

- Suddenly with no overseers watching over them, the enslaved civilians ran and hid deep underground and kept out of the fighting.

- When Unicron was destroyed, the two armies tried to maintain the truce, and prepare to evacuate the crumbling planet. We saw various warriors carrying crates around, doing work that we used to see slave workers do.

- The civilians (many of whom probably never even got upgraded to be able to transform) lie low, not knowing whether they can trust the two armies and show themselves.

- The Autobots broadcast a planet-wide warning to evacuate. The Decepticon army nicks the Autobot army's ships, and the Autobots pursue in the three ships produced by Grimlock.

- Up until stories like 'Yesterday's Heroes' (US #60, page 4, panel 2) we were shown glimpses of slave workers, Empties, neutrals. From Unicron onwards, they are absent, and it's pretty much just toy characters.

- Did the civilians freed as a side-effect of Primus' action find ships of their own and do a separate evacuation? Is a total evacuation realistic, given the size of the planet and timescales involved?

- Did they stay hidden on/in Cybertron while the Autobots and Decepticons were fighting on Klo? Not if we take literally the bit that says the Neo-Knights are the planet's sole population.

- If there were lots of non-aligned Cybertronians who evacuated from other parts of the planet after the Unicron War, and who didn't go to Klo (that was just three Decep ships and three Autobot ships as I recall), where did they go?

- If we ignore the bit that says the Neo-Knights are the planet's sole population, and say that there were some robots not accounted for in the Autobot and Decepticon evacuations, what was their attitude to the Autobots when Prime led them back home after US #80?

I think there's a lot of potential here for non-war TF stories and development of TF characters different from the ones we normally see.

Martin

[primenova]

One thing that got me thinking after reading Martin's post

- the smelting pool, we know that they where dumbing bodies in there to fuel it, so these being anyone who got crushed or could not be repaired worker?

[charlesrocketboy]

Sept 19, 2008 7:12:35 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

- Suddenly with no overseers watching over them, the enslaved civilians ran and hid deep underground and kept out of the fighting.

Now that'd be interesting, cos immediately after Unicron's death, the Demons start coming up from underground - based on Still Life, few people knew about the Demons who weren't around the last time they turned up, so the civilians are likely unprepared and quickly eaten in droves.

How pissed off will they be when they find out the Autobots and Decepticons knew what was down there and didn't pass it on?

that was just three Decep ships and three Autobot ships as I recall

There were. It either means the Autobots & Decepticons have been reduced to a few thousand blokes, the ships work like Astrotrain and are actually really big on the inside, there were other ships the Decepticons used (we just didn't see them) while Grimlock was planning on coming back later to pick up the other Autobots, or it was just a lot easier to draw.

I kind of like option 3 now I think of it, cos I can see Grimlock quite easily deciding who remains on the dying planet for a later pick-up and who he needs for the immediate fight.