#which is still a lot closer to rome than to cybertron

[megatron-fucks]

The absolute insanest thing about the Cybertronian civil war - beyond the question of how many millions of years it lasted or planets it destroyed or terrible evils it caused - is that it seems in most continuities to exist without the support of a functioning society.

(When it comes to the economy of warfare, I'm more familiar with non-industrial societies, where the costs of war are often much clearer. But in any society, a full-time soldiers is supported by the excess value produced by workers.)

Like if you think of the world wars (probably the closest comparison I'm aware of) - the entire non-fighting population had to change how they were living in order to provide the resources for the war. In WWI, the number of women in paid work nearly doubled, and the kind of work they were doing changed drastically to favour industries (like nursing and manufacturing) that directly supported the war. And that was still enormously difficult. That was nations pushing themselves to the absolute edge of possibility to survive.

With Cybertron, the nations don't survive. Most of the time, Cybertron is post-apocalyptic. And they are somehow still fighting a full on war.

You do definitely see evidence of this, at least in G1 and TFP (and probably others I'm less familiar with) because the Decepticons' main priority is energon. In G1, the Decepticons are relying on the human workforce to produce that value, which their soldiers then take by force.

That's comparable to looting by human armies, which is a significant part of how armies support and fund themselves. It doesn't usually provide enough resources to actually support the whole army but it makes sense that Cybertronian technology is efficient enough to make that work. (Worth noting that looting is a war crime.)

In TFP, the Decepticons seem to have a large mining workforce (equivalent to a human agricultural workforce) who are also capable of fighting if required. Things vary over the course of the show, but at the beginning it seems like actually a pretty close analogue to a human army: there's a huge number of workers producing food, who seem to make just enough to support their own operations + a little extra to support a small handful of dedicated soldiers.

In IDW1 the only really clear evidence I'm aware of is provided by Tarn at Grindcore. The Decepticons at that stage are apparently using prisoners both as a source of labour (if Tarn's promise about transportation has at least that core of truth to it) and as a source of materials.

(POW labour has historical precedent, though I don't know any examples where it was essential to an army's function. The second thing is a little more complicated but still, not a usual method.)

I think there's other stuff in IDW1 to suggest that both sides use their soldiers to scout for resources and that the Decepticons use materials from conquered planets to support the war effort, but I can't think of any other examples that suggest an actual workforce.

There is other stuff in terms of medicine and technology, and probably something to be said for construction, which I can make another post about if people are interested. But in terms of "providing the basic resources essential to a war," that's all I got.

Anyway there's a trend through all of that which is the interesting thing: the Decepticons are the only ones who can actually maybe support their own war effort. Which makes sense: if you have a standing army, there are civilians somewhere doing the work of supporting them. And the only way we really consider it acceptable to take resources from civilians and give it to the army is taxation.

So it makes sense that only example I could think of where Autobots can clearly say "This is where our resources come from" is the one where there's still a functioning state.

The possible exception to that is foraging, which is something that ancient armies relied on to various extents. Generally the stuff I've read said that foraging for the bulk of your resources is an act of desperation that leaves your soldiers angry, hungry and tired, and makes it very hard to actually fight a war. But foraging to supplement your resources should be encouraged under most circumstances, especially if it means your enemy can't use those resources.

I think that in TFP, there's some implication that the Autobots are surviving off stockpiles? I feel like it's actually a fairly realistic example, because the Autobots on Earth are clearly a small, desperate group struggling to survive without a greater support system.

At the start of the show, IIRC, they're acting as scouts while keeping an eye out for energon, which is sensible. But their "foraging" duties seem to fall to the wayside once they find Decepticons.

#modern history is not my forte so please forgive any errors on that front #transformers prime #tfp #transformers g1 #transformers idw #idw1 #worldbuilding #sort of #its kinda unfortunate that 90% of what i know about war economy is like #confined to ancient rome and china #(which are quite comparable on this front) #and like 8 of the remaining 10% is medieval europe #which is still a lot closer to rome than to cybertron #i know some snippets of stuff about seasonal warfare #(e.g. 'vikings' and i think ancient egypt at times) #but that doesn't seem like a good comparison to any of this