billwoo

First, I am pleased you rebuilt X from ground up, it shows great commitment to the IP and the genre, and I am looking forward to the new release (my X3:AP is running in the background as I write this btw!) . But I have to ask, why did you go down the route of one ship for the player to directly control? It seems a large departure previous versions, and doesn't seem to provide any more options to the player (other than the nice interior views which would be much work to do for all ships), only less...

Part 2 if you have time, do you foresee the modding tools being able to circumvent this limitation in any way?

This is great to hear! I hope you won't hold back tools due to lack of documentation or lack of polish, the community has your back!

You should check the extensive existing posts in /r/gamedev regarding these very issues.