If you already know a little bit of programming, from creating websites for example, then yeah it's a pretty good game on it's own, it's basically Starship Troopers the game, but with robots :) The graphics aren't that good of course since it's old but to me that doesn't matter that much when the gameplay is great. Maybe you can even get away without any programming at all. Some things would be a bit tedious but I think you can do it. When you remote control a fighter robot, the game is basically a first person shooter with real-time strategy elements.

You can also combine the programming with manual control. For example, you could fly a ship manually but have a program ready that automatically targets and fires at aliens. Or have one that returns a ship back to the base to recharge the battery so you can remote control another robot and don't have to do that tedious bit of backtracking to the base yourself and just stay always where the action is :)