videospirit posted... Yeah, they could only stay in their robot forms for so long because they took damage in that form too.
Basically life on earth had adapted to the high levels of "plot energy" the energon gave off, but the animals weren't especially effective in a robot on robot fight. They took the animal form to stop themselves from having power surges and let the energy they built up while in robot form dissipate, and would switch to robot forms when they actually needed to fight.
Disguise wasn't really an aspect of it at all, although their animals forms were harder to distinguish from native lifeforms than their robot forms were certainly.
No clue what the fuck the justification will be in the new modern day setting, but it's really just an excuse to make transforming toys, not some serious science fiction premise.
Um, Earth in Beast Wars is a spoiler