I ended up giving Rebirth a whirl over the weekend, due to the free play. It...I hate to ask, but was this 3.0 patch really the improved version compared to launch? I just couldn't get into it, not with the gameplay (walking around stations sounds nifty, but only works the first couple times), not with the fluff, and not with the character designs (forget ugly graphics; I simply cannot get over the sheer impracticality of bare skin on a space suit).
On the other hand, it got me to start over in X3: Terran Conflict, so there's that. I even started a Vanilla+ game this time to give it a whirl without any fancy script mods, so I actually, after over a hundred hours of gameplay, finally unlocked my
first achievement.
One of the only problems with Freelancer was that the galaxy was entirely static. All stations were invincible except for storyline, and organizations never get weaker no matter how many of their ships or mission-spawned outposts you destroy. Prices never even change. I haven't played any of the X series, are they like that?
Just about every station is destructible... the Torus is probably the only exeption but lore wise it's pretty much a superfortress built out of pure paranoia (and it's gone in AP)
The universe kinda reminds me of space rangers... to some extent because while enemies are often spawned in most other ships like traders dynamically go to the most profitable stations nearby.
It may not be a station, but I think the ship Argon One is another exception to the "everything is destructible" rule. I wasn't aware of the Torus, though, so that now makes precisely two stations or ships in the entire game that cannot be destroyed to the best of my knowledge.