You would think that everystation in X3 would have some sort of basic maintainence facility or different shops set up by the residents to sell visitors. Also the places you visited were multifuntional. You could see the different between a rich inner world and a hunk of asteroid with a mine. Call me old or weird, but I think Privateer's station interiors helped out well with the atmosphere. So all you ever see is different overlays in your cockpit. X3 has it so you dock outside instead of inside the stations. Atmosphere is more of a minor thing, but its nice to actually leave the cockpit.
Hell, MS-DOS Shell had more mouse functionality. The saving grace is that intrepid scripters have made scripts to help automate and control some of the hairier micromanaging nightmares (Yay for UT,BPH,Anarkis, and Xai!), but in reality, 3rd party volunteer work-arounds shouldn't even be needed. Now try coordinating a large battle with that mechanism. Yeah theres a mouse pointer, but its limited to clikcing on menu items that already have hotkeys assigned to them, making it slow and useles. There is no mouse to highlight my ships at once and issue a specific command (click, highlight, right click?) A simple contex based mouse control system would go a long long way. If I have 5 fighters and want them to attack 2 specific targets, I have to select each fighter individually and issue it the order through multiple text menues. The game hybrids flight Simulation w/RTS, but you'll bang your head against the wall trying to manage well, almost anything. Egosoft apparently has not dicovered the Mouse and somehow still thinks DOS is still alive. Now its the same interface that X2 and XBTF had, and that's the problem.
However, X3's killer has been its interface and lack of atmosphere. there's a tons of places to explore and the effects make the game world- jaw dropping. The graphics are also very very sweet and the sound isn't bad. You can do everything you've wanted in space, from hunting pirates to owning cruisers and space stations. Its heavily based on Elite and has great core gameplay. I think that the game mechanics are for the most part awesome. That said, I'm refuing to buy X3:TC untilI actually see the entire game in action. I've been a huge X fan and actually have every game.