sorry if this has already been asked but i was wondering about the over all interface of the galaxy. will it be like in Battle for middle earth where you have a living map and you can only chose your missions or will it be more free?

Free.

There are no missions per say.
But once in awhile you'll be told to do certain things, like rescue and protect the X-Wing dev team escaping the clutches of the Empire (if you are rebel that is :) ).

So in other words it'll be like Rome total war but in star wars? Free to do what you want and ocassionally do a mission.

Pretty much yeah :) In theory at least.

It would be like playing with any one of the Roman factions minus the annoying Senate.

I wonder if you can ignore those missions though? What if you're poised to take over a world - the fleet is asembled, the troops loaded and ready only to have to tell them to move half way across the galaxy to defend the Dev team for example? What if you were allowed to choose between ignoring the mission and taking the world, but missing out on the X-wing? Personally I'd try and do both - take the world with current fleet - send whatever was handy to defend to dev team and throw together a ragtag groups of reinforcements to support the dev team as quick as possible.