Hold your horses here, are you saying this is a third person game, where YOU can build an empire? In a third person game?! That sounds amazing.. I got to check this X3 game out.

Wait how does it work though? Do you have a fleet following you around? Oh and, I've got another question, is it possible to dock planets in this game? Like in Freelancer?

X3 is pretty cool.

However, you need time. You start as a little tiny independent trader and go from there. It takes time to actually have the money to sustain a fleet (You can even buy a whole star system at one time...). Yes, you can have a huge fleet and start conquering if you feel like it. But, honestly: It takes time! (In the new "X3: terran conflict", which is independent of the other "X3: Reunion" (more like an X4), you seem to be able to even hire marines and boarding parties, which then capture enemy vessels for you...) However, the main focus is on the galaxy wide economics which is in real time...

For X3:Reunion there is a pretty good fan mod (actually a finished playable mod!), which adds new sectors to explore and new missions, as well. They included sth like a fast start, in which you can choose to be a trader who already has a decent amount of money. That really speeds up the gameplay. (However, I wanted to make it on my own and started the game vanilla style... It took ages... And at one time I simply focused on other games...)

In general, X3: Reunion is IMHO warmly recommended.

Since no one has explained it yet, details.

Taking X3:Reunion's main plot as the starter.  You start out a lot like Freelancer, a pilot with a ship.  There's new badguys popping up and nuking people out of nowhere, a generic badguy.  You go through the missions, trading and blowing up pirates to advance yourself, a lot like Freelancer still.  Eventually you win and are left with no more serious badguys to exterminate, still a lot like Freelancer.

What's not like Freelancer at all is the system in which the campaign takes place.  You have a property management system that lets you deploy ai pilots in multiple vessels.  You can buy freighters and run them manually in that management system through orders, or you can pop a higher level trade computer in them and automate the bastards entirely with the click of a button.  You can form flight wings, set groups on system patrols, set up mining bases on asteroids, buy factories, battleships, carriers, even obtain a space station for producing ships yourself, all without the use of mods.  They have a simulated economy too, weapons are built at weapon factories, using components that come from other factories, built by raw materials mines from asteriods, with energy from solar panel stations being the juice that makes them all run.

Unlike Freelancer, you can build up an armada with your own industrial power behind it and wipe out entire systems in glorious fleet on fleet battles with carriers, battleships, and hundreds of fighters.  It's beautiful, although this happens at a couple fps if you're running anywhere near the recommended sys reqs...

With mods, specifically Xtended, the game is pure badass outside of that minor issue I previously mentioned.  There's something very empty in beating script driven opponents, if the races were actual sides with their own motivations, I'd be in heaven.  With the right mods though, you can systematically exterminate them one system at a time and clear the entire galaxy of all that reside.

Edit: Ship capture!  Can't believe I left that out, pilots have a chance to bail out when you kick the crap out of them, leaving you a damaged ship that you can take posession of.  Freighter captains even dump their cargo for you frequently when you attack them.  Piracy really does pay in X3.