What about mass effect? It half fits your description.death1505921

Eh.. not quite. You can't change ships.. you also can't dogfight and steal your enemies' cargo. You can SORTA scour planets for minerals and such, but you can't sell them (as far as I know).

So it looks like I'll be checking out X3 and Freelancer.. and possibly Eve Online. Thanks for all the suggestions!

Played X2.. was cool until the enemy alien race (with the unfortunate name of "Khaak") showed up, and started raining on my parade. The game was way too hard, in my opinion. Not sure if X3 is going to be much better than that.

But.. Freelancer: noted. Also, I hear FreeSpace 2 is good but I'm not sure how much it lets you navigate around and explore freely..?

I'm looking for a good space sim (must be able to run on WinXP) that allows the player to basically roam freely and engage in any kind of activities he/she wishes. Examples: mine for certain materials, sell them, use the cash to upgrade your weapons or your ship (or buy a new ship), go out and hunt down pirates and blast them to hell, steal their cargo, sell it...etc.. you get the idea. ;) The game could optionally have a critical path to follow, but not required. Maybe something like Oblivion in space, basically. A critical path, optionally several side quests, but MAINLY the ability to just explore planets, space stations, mess around, etc.

Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!