I've played it a bit. I was looking for more of an action focused game (ala Tie Fighter) and less of the other stuff a game like this one does, so it wasn't for me. They have a demo if you want to just give it a spin yourself.

I do not know about you but all the parts for me are too ugly for it to really matter (at least with non-military vessels).

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My biggest gripe with it is the trade system is poorly done. The 'economy' level of systems impacts prices to the point that the differences from a type of goods being cheap/expensive for buying/selling (respectively) does not matter. And there is no way to find prices for systems other than the current one (not even a record of what they were last time you visited a system).

Oh and the fastest way to make money is is to buy full converters in the lowest economy system you can find them in and selling them in a higher economy system.

More like a 'meh' game.

Argh, the controls are enough to tell me don't even test it !

I don't have a joystick and I play on a laptop so even basic strategy games like SC2 can become really annoying sometimes (especially with the middle mouse feature on the side of the touchpad or the double tap feature = click)

I was expecting something more like freelancer (but again, even if I play freelancer, I'll need to buy a mouse) I liked the easy controls of freelancer.

Also, I tried X: Reunion and although the controls are kind of okay, still not the best, there's something just repulsing me from that game. I didn't like the lack of tutorial, you really got to be a professional of the X series to understand what was happening. The hud is terrible, little icons that lead to tons of complicated windows giving you a lot of info about anything that can possibly be in the game (I admit, even though I had a hard time through those windows, I liked the feature of having so many info), going to one point from another need a loading screen which is static and kind of break the experience and last, your ship just move as if it was attached to a broomstick !

But X had good points for me too like the amazing graphics, the possibility to build a base and a fleet, the fact that you can get out of your ship and float in space to reach another ship (that one is tough) and of course the amazingly beautiful music (to my taste at least).

I wish those feature were in freelancer too but in a simpliest way

I've heard that the UI was drastically changed but I always wondered to what extent it changed?

Aaaah, Ships in X3 beats everything ! And the X-Tended mod is so Awesome, they made so much ships with spectacular design !!! So is X3-TC compatible with X-Tended or did they make a new mod for it already?

I didn't read anything about it, but did they modify the gameplay so that it's easier to destroy other ships? I'm interested in X3-TC too but when I remember how hard everything was... You really have to dig in long internet tutorial to begin to understand what X really is [e digicons]:'([/e] and that's the only concerns that really killed the game from having a huge success ! I saw lots of tutorial on X forums but when you see a 50 page tutorial, it kinds of kills your will to play  They didn't think about targeting new players but only X veterans I wish they could make a new one more user-friendly with in depth tutorial (and maybe improve the horrible cinematics too )

The menus have been made friendlier and easier to access what you need without jumping through hoops. In addition, you can fly around with your mouse (meaning, ship turns to aim at mouse pointer) in addition to being able to 'free' the mouse to click on stuff.

To be honest, I don't know. I haven't played it in quite a while, just found the screenshot of the Terran Odin.

Well, having mouse control over your ship makes fighting quite a bit funner since you don't need to pilot with one hand and aim with the other. There's also a boarding mechanic in TC - you recruit a bunch of guys and train them in several skills to make boarding ships easier/faster/better. First you bring the ship's shields down, and have to keep them down so when you release your guys in space suits, they don't fry on the shields. Then they have to cut through the hull (skill-based), fight the enemy crew/security while making their way to the bridge (skill-based), and finally override the ship's controls (skill-based). At pretty much any point you can fail, your boarding party can die, etc. It's quite fun, and the TC universe is littered with unique ships that you can't buy, only capture. For example, there's a really awesome M6 that can actually hold 2 fighters, sort of like a mini-carrier.

The other big change is that while in Reunion you had to dock with a station and browse through news postings for jobs, here as you fly by stations they will have an icon to indicate if they have a mission and what kind of mission it is (kill, transport, build, etc). Then you just open comms and talk to the person offering it, no need to dock.

As a final comment on the game, the high point for me was running into stuff when activating the jump drive. Because it looked cool.