oh before you say look at starscream please tell at what point in the end does it say he got far, he may have only made it to the moon and sent a signal to other decepticons

as with astrotrain point taken but if he was the ship
ultra magnus was on in the movie..when galvatron was
pursuing him.. get the point?

Astrotrain in the movie much like Omega supreme are ships..
but then again look at someone like Omega, look at the msall hatches he is built to be fixed by smaller units.. hence the assumption
that he to was considred an “expendable” by the occupants.
Remember he is a guardian and guardians where repaired and maintained by the quintessons much like equipment (such as ships,cannons,etc)
albeit the only one that has become fully sentient.

as with astrotrain.. this opens up the “massshifting debate”
since skyfire does the same thing BUT HE IS BIG..
but can skyfire carry all the autobot’s spare parts or
any sort of cargo in a “protected environment”?
Yes and no…

remember the autobots did not choose their form in the cartoon
and they are optimized for their own tasks
not for hauling energon or spare parts..
that is dead weight in combat.
(remember the cronstructions, they drop the enerhon before they fight..but the enrgon is itself exposed to harm.)

The ark on the other hand..could carry
ALL the autobots, their supplies and potentially anything else
and IT WAS EXPENDABLE, easy to modify and EASY to repair.
(compared to transformers)
again you could say omega supremem but what was he build for???
(not exploration..)

It makes sense to have something that gets beaten
up by asteroids along the away from point a to b
and have fresh auobots ready to
do their task or fight in prime condition and
not have to worry about something that cannot be fixed
or wasting energy that could be used for fighting or building
that wa sused up travelling.

In the live action movie the idea of the transformers having a
protoform and coming down like a meteorite seems okay
but for me it would have been more logical if they had some
sort of “very thick” layered protective coating that
would protect the autobots from any electronic interference
,friction and collisions with other falling bodies.

It would have made more sense if they were all together
sort of like bunched up in one protective form
(so none could get lost..just in case)
then brake apart after entering the earth’s athmosphere
removing the main protective coating which has burned
up upon re-entry much like a “ship”.
But this way is believable as a one way ticket.
I’d like to see how they’d get off this rock
and the protoforms do not
appear to have something believable that coud do such a thing
like a “booster” (parts of a ship..)