Mr.Mumbles: This just reminded me that I still haven't given this franchise a try yet. I did buy the Terran War pack a while back - from what I've read it is supposed to be the best of the bunch so I went with that - so I guess I ought to give Terran Conflict a go.
I did the same thing but what I ended up putting it off and picked up the X bundle later on. I then ended up playing the games in order. I've finished X:BtF and X2: The Threat and I'm playing X3: Reunion now. In my experience, the X games get pretty complex and they are quite different from each other.
X:BtF can be a hit or a miss in places and there are some flaws with can make this game irritating at times. However, it likely the game you'll be finished with sooner as I didn't think there was much point in continuing after your ship (the only one you can fly) was fully upgraded. Give it a go by all means but if you don't care about finishing it, I wouldn't blame you.
I still recommend you try X2: The threat though if you want to ease yourself into the series as it is a simpler game to get into but not too simple like X:BtF was. For factories, you'll probably only be building solar power plants. The economy is a little wonky in that regard but I liked that X2 had unique pirate ships and mining was done much better in X2 then X3 (not sure about X:AP or X:TC though). Even though I'm enjoying X3:R a lot, I still want to go back to X2 sometime in the future.
Oh, and some people couldn't get into X2 because "your starting ship sucks". Regardless of what you hear people say, the M5 Discoverer you start the game with doesn't suck provided you use it correctly. I thought it was really good and found a use for it throughout the game. The people who say "Wahhh!!! The starting ship sucks, I can't kill anything in it" are doing it wrong. You would probably laugh at someone who said "Wahhh!!!! Screwdrivers suck cos I can't hammer in nails with it". Your starter ship does need to be fully upgraded though and when it is, it shines in what it can do. You can capture similar ships (one of which is a pirate ship that's even better for capturing), do escort missions, small trade runs (late game, I kept my starting ship and used it for equipment runs) scout sectors or use it as a mobile satelite. For combat, you can take on isolated scout ships and light fighters without using missiles, anything you can't fight, you can outrun,including missiles. Just something to keep in mind if you ever start playing X2 ;)
