Jusst an opinion here, but i think the "expansion" framework might actually be the way to tell the story, and lay out the campaign, we start with Sins vanilla 1.0 and then move up to upgrades on ships as the war between the Tec, Advent and Vasari get under way, we move incrementally up with tweaks in the ships, in abilities, to the point where we actually begin to "Entrech". Historically on the timeline, this is ten years after the war has started.

Tec and Advent and Vasari have been at this a long time now, with heavy losses and heavy changes in technology, each side now has starbases and heavy anti-structure ships.

"Diplomacy" is coming, and part of the tag says "twenty five years after the war has started, which of course moves us further down the historical timeline. With diplomatic liasons and envoy craft.

Beyond these, is something on the horizon that you or i dont even see yet, but the devs do, and maybe this is how they will do it, not an "all at once" maga campaign expansion, but incrementally, getting there in say, what do they want or forsee?  Diplomacy and then Sins2?  Or Sins2 and three full sized expansions beyond that? Like WOW or GuildWars?

We already have battle coming out our ears, and so we move by degrees toward other facets of the game, to make it broader and more interesting on different levels. So now we can play the same game in a variety of ways, with different strengths and different emphases.

Maybe down the line, they will hit us with an "In Your Face" all out massive battle assault, where we are almost outstripped in tech and ability and have to hang on with our fingernails to get through a game?    Haha, might be cool, very very cool in fact to go up against something that blows everything i can do at it almost away.    Haha,

Instead of freaking out and not playing i would probably figure out a way to do something, 

Anyway, my point is ... It might be better to go incremental and tell a broader and bigger and larger story, rather than trying to cram everything into one budget and one expansion to try and fullfill everyone's expectations of what a Sins campaign should be.

-Teal

Start a thread looking for people who want to seriously RP out an epic SOASE match over the course of many sessions over an indeterminate length of time. I'm pretty sure you'll find you aren't alone, and get some takers. The hard part is just agreeing on a time for the matches.

Roleplayers, like Dead Heads, are everywhere.

-Itharus

I would prefer no campaigns in games, but an open way for the community to make them easily. Campaigns are played through once, and then forgotten. The sandbox mode keeps you coming back, and should be the focus of any game. And then, the community could create campaigns with the editor and there would be many choices for good campaigns.

A campaign editor would be a great idea.  Let players and modders make the content and it will take off and take on a life of its own.  It's great for the developers because people do the work for free and increase their game's value to prospective buyers.

personally, i would have killed for a third expansion that would have brought a campaign editor but, sadly, it will stop with diplomacy so i don't think there is any hope left to see a campaign editor in sins, as awesome it would have been.

Well we know that there's going to be a Sins 2, and as whiskey said, there's no more micro-expansions BUT STILL the possibility of full-fledged expansions. Combined with the fact that they could add a campaign editor into an update without having it be an expansion.