Suggestion: Never Ending Galactic War

I'd welcome it as a game mode, but I would like to have a mode which I can actually win.

This! I believe I have already suggested it before. Anyway this is exactly what I pictured Galactic War like. Imagine dozens of different factions fighting for dominance. Surely there aren't just those 4 factions, there may be many more sub-factions or rogue factions. This would also be great because you could play it for weeks.

Yes.

You do get why people are obsessed with a storyline. You said it yourself. Because if it's good it makes the player more engaged. The fact that it is expensive is not an argument against the existence of a storyline, but only against its inclusion in games that can't afford it.

On a theoretical level, it all comes back to how immersion works in art. Any game could just be dumped on your lap with bare mechanics with no background, but a good background (which is what the cutscenes are: a background to every stage or map you fight) will help draw you that much deeper to what's happening in your screen.

Now some people say that plot is not so important to strategy games. Chris Taylor said it in an interview before SupCom was released. But if you play grand strategy games you will have heard of Alpha Centauri, and how much more superior it is to the Civilization games. Most people say that that's because it's mechanically superior, and while this is true to an extent, it also owes a great deal of its success to its far superior atmosphere and plot. Just give that game a go and you will see what I mean. It is the ultimate example of superior plot in a strategy game, and how it is accomplished with little more than a few lines of text here and there, and superior visual and audio design. If PA could get that sort of treatment at some point it would improve its effect immeasurably to people who are sensitive enough to appreciate this kind of thing. Granted the aspie dude who spends all day scouring YouTube videos and message boards for the tiniest advantage over his opponents wouldn't feel much of a difference (hell, the text might even come to annoy him), but everyone else would appreciate it to one extent or another.

But yes, at this stage of development of PA, it is a needless luxury.

People wanting a storyline is like others wanting in-game chat and a ladder.

People like different things.

Doesn't really matter.

A storyline is a confirmed no, and has been a confirmed no for a while.

wouldn't it be easier to start a new war with the selection you ended the last?