My brains been thinking lately. This is definetly another one of my farther out ideas, but if correctly handeled an implemented i think its something that would really add life to FS, and overshadow GC's infamy for good. I'm sure a large number of you have played Empire at War. And I'm sure you've all enjoyed the galactic conquest mode (a mode that allows the player to attempt to conquer the galaxy one planet at a time, for those of you who haven't played).
Well if a galactic conquest style strategy mode could somehow be implemented in FS, I can't think of anything that would let FS out shine the other mods better. Heres my somehow of how to do it:

This would definetly require some extra coding, but most of what it envolves has been proven workable (Shattered Faith's campaign setup). Basically it entails letting a team's commander choose where he wants the next battle to be. Lets say for instance that last battle the rebels won after defending hoth. The winning team gets to attack a planet now, of course only one that is adjacent. The way the galactic map would be carried out would for it to be a 'map'. Basically after every battle, the server automatically loads this 'map'. However on this map there is no battle, no spawn pionts nothing. No one spawns. The entire map (the actual game enviroment) is the galactic map. It has the planets (each represents a different map) and other cool looking things, including visible hyper space lanes so the commander knows what planets can be attacked. The commander whoose turn it is to attack simply clicks on the planet, and that ends the galactic map 'map' and loads the one the commander clicked on. This would bring in some heavy strategy, especially if some other dressings of RTSes are added, like being able to build defences on a planet, bringing 'fleets' in to allow ground bombardment, you get it.
Just picture it as an FPS version of Empire at War. Of course you'll also have to add some new tools to make sure the troops like they're commander (hoping you'd do that any way tho).
Basically once the galactic conquest mode is ironed out, you guys could keep building on it, with new and innovative content.

Futurama: You Can't Prove it Won't Happen