Vinh KruczekDaiyousei7True. The only reason X series won over Freelancer is due to how you had more control over what happened in the simulation. Freelancer was absolutely mindblowing with mods though. Can't forget Freespace either.
Ah yes, Discovery Freelancer times between 2008-2016. Wonderful community which turned into circle-jerking and toxicity underneath damn good job expanding over original game. There was even a moment when players even held server hostage (TL;DR staff got rid of most toxic people who also were people generating a lot of activity as respective faction leaders). This is why I poke at the fact that what is considered toxicity on INARA or respective player groups is nowhere close to what I remember from Discovery GC - and one of the reasons why I finally turned to Elite in the first place.
I remember there also was a total conversion mod (in Russian BUT more or less translated into English though), which had a simple goal to restore what initially Freelancer was supposed to look like in the first place. That mod, despite lack of a lot of polishing, was like exploring a wholly different game. Freelancer has fallen the victim of over-expanding Chris Roberts' ego though - what made him kicked from lead designer(?) role if I remember right.
I played Freelancer with the Crossfire mod back in the day. It was great.