Navagon: The plot seems to have been directly lifted from Total Annihilation. I suppose the fact that they were inspired by TA is a positive enough sign for me to be interested in this.
It's a bit different - in TA.. well, it's best summed up by the intro:
"What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination."
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Machines takes place some time after humanity tried to expand out into the galaxy, sending numerous "seeder ships" equipped with AI supercomputers and various equipment and resources. The machines went out and seeded a number of planets, but mankind never arrived. A few hundred years later, a pair of the AIs encounter each other in an unseeded system. Each AI demands that the other cede control to them. When this doesn't occur, they both infer that the other AI controller is malfunctioning and has to be deactivated. This sparks the greatest war the galaxy has ever seen...
^paraphrased from the intro in the manual.
It's quite a good game - graphics were good for the time (it was one of the first fully 3D RTS games, if not THE first), first person view in a RTS was quite innovative.
The only downsides are the somewhat wonky pathfinding and there only being one playable faction. That said, there's a fair amount of unit variety on offer.
I own a retail version of the game from when it was originally released, but I'd happily buy it again from GOG.
