Klumpen0815: Well, calling it a sim when it's about fictional vehicles is a stretch anyway, but if you like manual energy management, I'd always recommend
Tie Fighter first. The tactical aspect of rerouting the energy between front shields, rear shields and weapon systems is quite cool and I like the mission design.
drealmer7: TIE Fighter is THE best fight-flight sim I've ever played. I never played Alliance though, or XvT. I actually was never able to get far through X-Wing either when it was released because of a bug that made it crash on like Tour II or something. I'm playing through it now FINALLY for the first time, then will get to TIE Fighter again, which I haven't played since I had it on 3.25 floppies for DOS, never got to play the expansions....oooooo it's exciting.
I have a strong nostalgia for Tie Fighter, since it was one of three games besides Civilisation 1 and Worms 1 (which are awesome too) we had on my fathers 386 PC for a long time and I'm not sure if I can be unbiased towards this one, but to me it is still the best space fight simulator. I never felt the same magic with X-Wing or the others I got much later, all those felt bland in comparison.
I've never played the 90s remake that seems to have a higher resolution though and will try it soon. I didn't even know it existed before GoG, I haven't even played the expansion either yet.