It is nothing like Sins in gameplay. It isn't even strategy! It is, more or less, the ultimate single-player Sandbox game. You fly a ship and can do anything from trading, pirating, fighting, building stations and hiring traders to do all the manufacturing and trading for you.. so on, so forth. There are several different "starts" available that set up the game universe and there's a semi-loose main mission chain that explores the conflict that's the backdrop for the universe but you're not even required to complete it.

Since you have not played the X games before, I would recommend starting with Terran Conflict. The universe is pretty much the same as in X3: Reunion, just extra Terran stuff added. But the gem in it is that the UI received a much needed overhaul to make it easier to manage. It is a very complex game, and it was incredibly easy to get lost in all the windows in the earlier games. Terran Conflict streamlines the UI a lot and makes it much less of a headache to learn.

I have the game, and played here and there.  From my experience, i can say the following, it is not a game for someone who just want something as simple as freelancer or Darkstar One.  It is even more complex in control than Freespace series of games, though not as bad as the battlecrusier series type games.  The combat can be intense or as handsoff as you want, what i mean by this is that you can do a lot of things by hitting the autopilot button and if you have the right flight software installed within the game universe, you can tell your ship to attack the enemy you are targeting.

As far as strategy goes..i will say this, like the previous poster says, there is strategy in building your empire and having your own fleets of ships etc.  What makes this iteration different than say X2 the threat, or X3 the reunion are two main things, one, you can train your own marines to capture ships, what i mean is boarding and capture ships, two, the controls are mouse driven.  However, given that it is mouse driven controls, you still have to know where everything is as far as the various menus so that you can make full use of your ships. 

One last thing is that you can receive various missions from different stations, but in previous iterations, there is a BBS (bulletein board system) where you can read up on the various news of the X-Universe, but now, that is gone now, so the universe is not as lively as people once felt it should be.  Having said that, there are a lot of things you can do in the game, as far as missions goes.  Also, there are five different plots you can play through, but how to activate them remains to be something that a player have to discover for herself.

Now for the battles, well..what can i say, the battles are gigantic, what i mean is you can have carrier and destroyers pounding at each other on a scale that is bigger than any of the previous iterations.  You can even take out gigantic stations and factories if you want.  But....if your rig or graphics card is not up to par, then it might turn into a mild power point slide show at times.  Oh yeah, those big battles, you can participate yourself, or you can command a fleet of a few thousand ships in sector and just wipe the floor against the NPC factions.

As a proud owner of both X3:Reunion and X3:TC, I'd say that TC is not mature. Yet. There are still some bugs to correct, some missions difficulty and rewards to balance, some scripts to add (need a Bonus Pack like Reunion), etc...

X3:R (with the latest version of the Bonus Pack) is more complete.

And I don't like the new interface & control of Terran Conflict  (and give us back the BBS )

Well, there is one more advantage of X3: Reunion - after aplying the last official patch it does not require a DVD in the drive (X3: terran conflict does at the moment).

Both are excellent games. I bought both, but now I am playing Reunion.

For trading it is not necessary to use a mouse or a joystick, but for combat the good joystick is an advantage.

Yes, the manual is fairly good and there are lots and lots of tutorials on the web for everything - how to fight, how to set up stations and production chains, how to set up and hire traders, etc. There is a ton of info out there. I'll reiterate what was posted already, though: it isn't an easy game to get into. There's really not much of an in-game tutorial other than "this is how you fly your ship", so it will take a bit of effort to learn the ins and outs.

For the most part, yes. But you also aren't required to in a lot of cases. You can buy various computer software upgrades for your ships (Flight Command, Trade Command, Special Command marks 1-3, etc) that enables you to automate the AI for ships you own by issuing orders to it. For example, you can order a ship you own to sweep the current sector and pick up all the floating cargo. Or you can remotely order a trade ship to buy a certain cargo in one station and fly it to the other end of the galaxy. For your AI-combat ships you can designate individual targets, or just say "protect me". So it allows for a lot of micromanagement, but doesn't force it.

There are other views, but I don't use them much.. you can get good camera angles of your ship, but if you're flying around fighting you'll need the HUD so you'll probably be in the "cockpit" view for most of the time.

They're all standalone, even X3 Reunion and X3 Terran Conflict.

I hear from some that X3:TC is very playable with keyboard/mouse and from others that you're insane if you buy it and don't own a joystick.

What's your take Annatar?

I'm kinda regretting not getting it for $27 during the Steam Holiday sale now.

I was perfectly fine with keyboard and mouse. There are some really quick and nimble ships out there, but the new control scheme for TC allows you to point your weapons with the mouse without moving your ship, so I found it quite easy to be precise.

The X series has been Mouse friendly (and player friendly) since X2. However, Terran Conflict adds a second control option (and makes it the default) that is lifted whole from Freelancer (ship orientation strives toward crosshair, fire is directed to the crosshair). So really, if you could play Freelancer without a joystick, then you can play TC without one - and if you're inventive you can easily configure the controls to work like Privateer 2 (to get the best of both control schemes).

Really, all the people recommending X3 over X3:TC are doing a newcomer to the series a huge disservice. It's like recommending X1 because it had better cockpit models - yeah sure, but the rest of the game is a simulation of an actual job, not a game.

TC makes getting ships and money far easier by offering very well paid combat missions, the interface is far easier to learn, and there's an in-game encyclopedia from which you can check all sorts of data on nearly everything - all things that make getting into the game easier.

Note that the DVD-in-drive requirement of TC (if it still exists) will be patched out shortly as has been the case with previous X titles - or you just buy Steam and get rid of that DVD requirement right then.

I have X3 was a really good game i just got bored.

How did this thread evade me? How did I not see it before?

..damn, I'm getting old. Getting slow...

My favorite kind of ship is a carrier with swarms of flighters flying around it. Do they have those too? Bonus points if the carrier also has big guns.

The X-series games are also massively improved by the fluff associated with it - but unless you know german, you won't be able to read it.

X3: Terran Conflict is a Great Game, but the best "space ship" game there is would have to be freelancer. I am quite perplexed by why that game faded into obscurity. I read somewhere about a Freelancer 2 but obviously it never came into existance. If only there was a game that combined the combat of Freelancer and the GTA space feeling of X3. Oh and does anyone know where to get boarding pods for x3 TC?