Hey Harley, Transformers question!

I finally saw that Tranformers movie tonight, and I got to wondering--would it be possible to cut a fuel line or valve, and cause the big suckers to 'bleed out' like if you cut a human's artery?

Possible plotbunnies hinge on this.

I know I'm not Harley, but I think I can answer the question anyway, remembering certain Transformers comics and a few interviews with scriptwriters and creators.

The main gist of it is that cutting a fuel valve wouldn't really be like "bleeding" the robot out, since you couldn't kill the Transformer that way. Even if he lost all the fuel, the worst that would happen to him would be that he went into "stasis lock" (which is kinda like the Transformer equivalent of losing consciousness), but as soon as he got some more fuel, he'd be right back on his feet, none the worse for wear. 

Also, Transformers would not get weak from "fuel loss" the way a human would get weak from blood loss, so if he was able to ignore the pain (and we are talking about war-trained robots here, so he probably would), he'd fight on at full strength right until the moment he completely ran out of fuel.  (This happened to Megatron in one comic.) Sooo... I guess the simple answer is "not really."

Really, to inflict the sort of effect on a robot that a bleedout would have on a human, you'd basically have to cause a hydraulic leak while sapping their electrical power supply. Losing hydraulic pressure would make them weaker and less able to move, similar to the lack of oxygen reaching muscles through the bloodstream. Draining the power supply would have an effect on the computers that run it, similar to the brain receiving less oxygen as blood pressure decreases.

That's assuming that Transformers actually work something like our big machines do, anyway.

Come on, you think Harley actually cares or knows? If you were thinking of a way to give them a robot penis, that's when you ask Harley.

Oh, that's straightforward enough. Obviously female Transformers come with internal assembly bays, which double as a port for male Transformers to upload schematic information, probably along with minor spare parts suspended in oil. Oh, and it's a hydraulically actuated armature.

OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE

Penguin wrote:

OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE

Given the people who were going to write TF porn anyway a chance to make it halfway realistic?


You're welcome.

grmblfjx wrote:

Come on, you think Harley actually cares or knows? If you were thinking of a way to give them a robot penis, that's when you ask Harley.

Or when you were thinking how to make robot rape fic, Harley's the one to ask.

Depends on the fandom. With Bayformers 'bleeding out' is not possible as they take the idea of them being unstoppable machines very seriously. They don't need to sleep in that one.

I don't think they even have fuel lines in Bayformers. Apart from Bay's dreadful sexual jokes which, incidentally, I don't find funny.

So grumbles, I DO know, because I own the Midquel book "Veiled Threat".

Bayformers are also canonically aware of attractiveness; although they do not find humans sexually attractive they do notice when humans wear artificial accessories such as water goggles and the like.