Machines: Wired for War

Strong AI, some murderous tendencies

Machines: Wired for War is a real-time strategy game which, despite having many good ideas, is little remembered apart from a hardcore group of online fans.

In the game you take the role of a semi-autonomous computer fighting for the controller of the red machine race in the final stages of the machine war. This war was started because two races of terraforming robots met up after five hundred and sixty years, and decided the other had gone insane.

Click here for unit descriptions (work in progress)

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Tropes used in Machines: Wired for War include:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: This system has encountered an unknown error, war commencing...
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Works out at (roughly) one of each unit, defence and building type, plus a few mines.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Commanding units are often heavily armed. In fact, they're the only mobile units that use the long-range Pulse Rifles and Pulse Cannons. The rifles are, asides from their use by Commanders/Commandants, employed solely on a defensive turret. The strongest of all Commanders is the ominously-named Assassin Warlord.
• Awesome but Impractical: B-bombers and Eradicator units.
• All There in the Manual: The reason you're here, the backstory
• Artificial Stupidity: used and averted, the drones can be quite aware of their surroundings but also have pathfinding issues.
• Bad Future: The machines have been Terraforming for over five hundred years and fighting for another five hundred years, with no word from humans. It's explicitly stated ^{[dead link]} that mankind is extinct.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: Health is only reduced when Armor is destroyed, however armor heals over time, health doesn't.
• Bottomless Magazines: standard implementation.
• Charm Person: The appropriately named Judas Warlord can do this using its unique Treachery weapon.
• Combat Medic: Certain variants of the Commanding units (fitted with Healing Chargers or Superchargers) are the only mobile units capable of healing other Machines. Still doesn't stop them from packing some pretty formidable armaments.
• Command and Conquer Economy: Somewhat averted, all resources have to mined and transported to a smelter before construction can begin. There is also no society to worry about.
• Cosmetically Different Sides: You're the red machines, fighting the blue machines... all units are otherwise identical.
• Critical Existence Failure: The machines will fight to their last hit point and explode on death.
• Dumb Muscle: Gorillas. They would be the ultimate destructive force... if they weren't so incredibly thick.
• Drop Ship: drop pods and flying APCs.
• Easy Logistics: Armour heals on its own and health can be restored on the battle field.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The Machines aren't really evil per se, but most of the combat/military units sound the part, as their synthesized voices are often quite deep and menacing. Reapers certainly sound like they enjoy their job.
• First-Person Shooter: You can zoom in and individually control one of your units, with one useful perk; it lets you fire on enemies from further away than the unit would normally. Now, remember that you can form squads. This means you can also lead them in person. This means, much like Dungeon Keeper 2, you can go tearing around the map with a warband in tow, trashing anything that crosses you. Have fun! Just don't forget about your base.
  • Awesome but Impractical: You can do it with everything. Even the basic Locator surveyors which walk sideways, like crabs. Have fun navigating the map when you can't see where you're going.
• Gatling Good: The autocannons mounted on turrets and two Reaper variants, as seen above. The standard Reaper mounts one autocannon; the Wraith Reaper mounts two.
• Glass Cannon: Eradicator units again.
• Hulk Speak: The Gorilla's vocabulary is inversely proportionate to its size. It being the largest two-legged unit...
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better - Averted, energy weapons and kinetic weapons are both good. If you don't research each type equally you may end up with lots of short range high damage weaponry or long range low damage weaponry.
• Kill Sat: Ion Cannon!
• Macross Missile Massacre: Gorillas, and any time you get a pack of missile-launching Knights, Knight Templars, and/or Warlords together.
• More Dakka: Wraith Reapers are this to their normal Reaper cousins, packing two guns and thus twice as much firepower. Same case with the Knight Templars and Knights, the Templars adding either adding a third Heavy Plasma Cannon or third Missile Launcher (and upgrading the range of their missiles) to the Knight's frame.
• Night Vision: All commander units have green coloured night vision that makes buildings and units more obvious.
• No Recycling: Aversion- units can be recycled, buildings can be deconstructed and debris can be collected.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: Buildings and troops.
• Sphere of Destruction: The gravity collapse weapon of the Eradicator units.
• Teleporters and Transporters: Factories and APC's have them built in
• Terraforming: The machines are a little too keen at this..
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The computer can build units without resources. (Resource consumption is real-time rather than paid at once at the beginning. For the computer, production goes on even at 0 BMU's while it stops for a human player. This doesn't affect building construction, however.) It can place building blueprints without paying the 5 BMU placement cost. It can launch a nuke for free while it normally costs 500 BMU's.