There's no campaign because Ironclad wanted to make a really good sandbox skirmish mode.

They do, however, want to finish telling the story, so there's a lot of speculation and hints at a campaign in an expansion

As for the AI - they naturally want to eliminate the biggest threat, if that means ganging up on you, they'll do it By default, teams aren't locked, so they can ally with each other (and you can ally with them!)

campaign would be nice i guess. but i don't miss it one iota. galciv2, civ4 etc may have some small campaign type modes (i don't even remember) but i never tried em anway. i always go with the random world mode.

YOU are the story and the campain how your sand box game ends is how the story ends thats how i took it   

Well now that they have a polished and thorough game system you can be sure stuff like this will be worked in future updates/expansions. I'd rather they sacrificed the campaign for a later schedule than put out a mediocre game. I'm tired of playing mediocre space rts's. This is like crack to me now.

The AI's will only tend to gang up on you when you're the biggest threat. Otherwise, they'll go after one another (and you can really screw around with them by dumping a lot of bounty on one - generate some internal strife). 

So... what about the story? I'm thinking that the creators deliberately left out a campaign so that we have to buy Sins 2. Yes, I have been called Mr. Obvious before.

One of my favorites up to this point was the Homeworld franchise. What I loved about homeworld: there was a purpose. What I hated about the homeworld campaign: mission-limited research. That's why I started playing against the computer in ffa mode because I had all of the research options (BATTLECRUISER!!!) available to me.

Anyway, the point: Homeworld went somewhere. Don't get me wrong, Sins is awesome! I'm a big fan of the research-based abilities... but it doesn't go anywhere. "Hey Honey, I just conquered another solar system!... so what do I do now?"

In fact, once you get all those great research based abilities, you can't use them, because you're toast, or everyone else is toast. But I digress yet again.

Actually... now this would be cool... you win a map with as many abilities as you can get, find the door, and voila, another map where you can continue to expand and get your @$$ handed to you by someone who got there first! tangential...

As for the "scenarios", which are nothing but different maps for FFAs... couldn't there be a "get to the homeworld first" task or a "destroy the oncoming fleet" task, or a "capture the flag" or "kidnap the princess" or "make it from point alpha to point beta before the sun explodes" or "find the holy grail before anyone else does" or...

Tasks. Sins needs Tasks. Sins needs a story... a plot. They have such a wonderful background on these three races, and none of it means anything. No development. No bearing. No subtle reasons for continuing on. No answer to the age ole question, "why?"

Also, maps regenerate everytime the game is played. Good and wonderful, because you don't play the same system twice (well, since it's an FFA, you really do play the same game over and over again). BUT, once you are in a game, everything is static. No ability to change phase lanes, though the Vesari phase stabilizer thingy can make things interesting (it's my favorite ability). How about an ability to change phase lanes, create new ones, or destroy them? Makes for a more dynamic game. Also, assuming the star is central, aren't the planets suppose to be moving? And who says that solar systems HAVE to be 2-D? Just because we live in the most boring solar system in the galaxy doesn't mean Sins does?

Notes for the sequel.

You have my permission to tell me to shut up.