i had reviewed this previously but have come back to the game again. It still could have had a better rating tho
This game hits on those bases, but of course is marred by a few LARGE things.
The first thing imo is that theres almost no information about anything with this game, and that the missions are all half complete, vague to the point of frustration and overall its difficulty because of a lack of hardware rather then skill in a bit too many cases. Also only certain markets arent functioning in the vanilla game or some other mechanic isnt available in some locations, and this just leads to frustration. because you as a user have no idea, and no idea how to use things without a vicious learning curve.
But other things are wicked. The combat itself can be sheer illmatic at times as you have multiple capital ships arrive and start dumping fighters and slugging it out with their enemies, destroying stations, planting their own and going about their day etc.
You yourself can basically setup macro like npcs to go off and trade for you and make you money periodically, and even get your own stations, and networks of stations, and have your ships running around maintaining and trading for you. Altho this is crazy hard to setup at many times and prone to some mishap (which can get key board frustrating lol).
I tried some more of these 'super mods' as ive had some success in the past, and tried 3 of the big ones, but they are all heavy handed and seem to effect balance far too much for what i would be looking for in a mod (a more natural but improved game experience),
x3 is another on my list of games that should easily be in the 9's, but really is lucky to get what it got in the 7's.