#also the reason I had to differentiate energy and energon here is because energon itself isn't a power source in my fic

[robotsprinkles]

So instead of taking all the writing advice saying not to give specific timeframes and dates/comments about spec-fic writers not understanding how time works how it should be taken — namely, not trying to create a comprehensive timeline of cybertronian history for my tf fic

I have instead decided to do things like calculate how long ago the colony titans would've needed to leave cybertron in order to have the population numbers I want them to have based off the amount of sparks titan hotspots generate every pulse and how long the time between pulses is

and how long it would take cybertron's population to reach approximately 5 billion (the number of living cybertronians at the time the war starts) after the shroud/shattering reduced it to the tens of thousands — again based off hotspot stats, but also based on how long it would take for the hotspots to recover and reignite

also instead of doing IDW's thing where cybertron's history and mythical and legendary figures aren't remembered accurately and all because of adaptus' moon gun, I'm having it be because the shroud/shattering caused cybertron's energon generation to completely cease for hundreds of thousands of years.

which resulted in most of the survivors either dying from starvation or going into stasis lock, with those who were reactivated when the planet recovered and began generating energon again suffering memory loss and corruption due to the lack of energy and energon (there's a difference in my fic. because I'm stupid) causing their sparks and brain modules to degrade over time.