system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Transformers] Why do the Autobots put themselves at such a disadvantage.

It's a common theme across almost all the incarnations of the story for the Decepticons to take Altmodes related to military tech (Tanks, Jets, warships etc) whereas the Autobots consistently take mostly civilian forms. Surely this puts them at a massive disadvantage since they're mostly cars, motorcycles, trucks etc. I know that there's exceptions for both sides, but what resulted in such a dimorphism?
gpt
Imagine having two groups of people, one of whom are obese and the other group have athletic bodies and they are to train for a race. The athletic group obviously have the advantage, their bodies are already prepared for such exercise. The obese group cannot easily complete this race because obviously their bodies are not suited to it.

So on Cybertron you have the military/police force of whom their bodies are designed for warfare and are capable of using them as weapons. The Autobots naturally were the rest of the civillian population where their tasks did not require weapons.   

It's a simple matter of not having the hardware to run the software.