Despite lots of viewpoints to the contrary I think this game is excellent. I currently own: x-beyond the frontier, x2: the threat and X3 reunion. X3 trumps all, add on the free xtended MOD and it turn into a damn fine space adventure. There is an incredibly active MOD community that's actually supported by Egosoft. My step-son and I actually play this game in the same room and have a BLAST doing it. For 5 bucks, this is a no brianer IMHO, just make sure you update to ver 2.5 (free from egosoft) grab the xtended mod (also free) snag Cycrows plug-in manager (again free) and maybe grab a few useful scripts (you guessed it.. free)

My only gripe is that the story line missions don't seem very epic in scale, at least not yet, I'm not very far into the game.

As for community support, there's all kinds. Everything from folks writing guides and small utillity scripts to TOTAL CONVERSION mods (including star wars AND Star Trek as far as I know). I'd recommend this game to anyone with an interest in space gaming.

Leks