For some of the guys who say they're new and looking for start up trading tips, I've noticed that when you first begin, the two Space Fuel Distilleries in Heron's Nebula just north of Argon Prime are damn near full, which means that the profit margin is huge. As an added bonus the Trading Station in the same sector will buy that fuel for max price, as will the Pirate stations in Atreus' Cloud and Ore Belt. Of course this only works if you begin in Argon Prime or near enough that you can get to that fuel before it gets bought up.
I've noticed nobody mentioned the DDTC mod. I've enjoyed this one a lot as it adds many new ships to the game (custom ones, as well as Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Babylon 5 and some others you may recognize). It also adds some features and a new special shipyard for every race that gives a new mission line and offers these ships for sale without going overboard with "new stuff". I've recently reformatted so I lost all of my good screenshots that show my Executor Star Destroyer that takes up half the damn sector and takes over a minute to fly by in a Harrier.
The best total conversion mod I've played is definitely Transcend II. This one adds a whole new universe and storyline and scraps all of the ships for new custom ones. This mod focuses a lot on exploration. If you're bored of standard TC and want to breathe new life into the game, this mod almost feels like picking up X3 for the first time again.
I also recommend playing this with the active cockpit mods. I feel they add a lot to the immersion factor. Some of them are so good that you can eliminate most of the hud and have it incorporated into the cockpit, which makes everything seem so much more alive to me. The capital ships bridge and the corvette cockpit are by far my favorite. I love free-looking left and right and seeing more displays with relevant information surrounding me. In fact I would even dare say that if the MWLL team are having trouble finding guys to do cockpits (i know nothing about modding unfortunately), that these guys seem to have the requisite skill sets.
I'm going to go now, because I can go on and on with this one...
