As far as the current lore, I agree: there is a cold war between the factions and all battles between them are mostly proxy wars rather than all-out scorched earth tactics. Honestly, I think that's all placeholder because we don't have a mechanic to capture planets, stations, etc. rather than in-game lore. Once planets can begin changing hands, I think the cold war/stagnation stuff will give way to a more dynamic sector.
That could tie into the procedurally generated parts of the sector, too. The core worlds are probably just too entrenched at this point to change hands by the player's actions, but a newer fledgling colony could be pushed over quite a bit more easily. The player could also influence colonization efforts long-term by providing lots of good quality survey data to only the faction(s) they like, and ignoring the others. It would be really cool to survey all the planets in a system, sell that data to some bureaucrat on Jangala, and then a couple game-time years later have a colonization fleet depart to create a new, very tiny market in that system.
