I hear X4 without DLCs is barebones, I got them all when Steam discounted them so I wouldn't know but I think the terran and boron DLCs are pretty important.
Mods? probably a cheat package if you don't truly hate yourself as long as you only use them when desperate.
How to get into it? You need lots of patience, the game's learning curve is very steep and other than consooming guides on youtube the only way to learn is to simply play and eventually look up information online when you get stuck - which may be a lot to ask of a game that costs 50€ excluding DLCs.
Perhaps you can try out X3:TC to see if you like how the series works, it came out in 2008 but it costs 16€, only has one paid expansion, and Egosoft published a free DLC in 2021 that is basically an official unofficial patch to the engine.
They still use twitter.com. Frankly, I think everyone should refer to them by the URL, rather than this "X, formally known as twitter" bullshit. "So and so posted on twitter.com" is a perfectly valid way of describing any tweet on "X".
I get that technically it's x now, but they still use the same URL. They do this to maintain digital footfall on the URL, that way, when the current business inevitably dies, whoever buys up the domain and URL and whatever other assets will adopt something that many people still have bookmarked and find familiar.
Twitter's death was sealed the moment the purchase was structured. Everything since then has been a mummer's farce.
X4 would be a perfect game for me if not for the horrendous ally AI. Put maybe 100 hours and uninstalled once I got a capital and sent it in to stop the alien scourge, only for it to wade around like a lost duck as it got blasted to pieces by the enemy.
Enemy NPCs have fine AI, why should player ones be so neutered? Should have listened to the reviews.
I somewhat disagree, the galaxy feels like it's 3 meters wide compared to the lore overload that is the universe before the gate shutdown and there are, like, 2 ships for each race.
I do love the more "personal" aspect of you walking around in a fuckoff huge ship during an intense battle, and... uh, half of the NPC models, but my single playthough's "endgame" felt more of a grind than its beginning somehow ("endgame" in quotes because I kinda dropped it).
The size felt just right for me. Didn't explore every area before I stopped though. Ship variety felt ok, just wish there had been some more variety in aesthetics. Many are straight up ugly, and the haulers are near identical to each other's variants.
I only got as far as amassing enough cash to be a small-time player in the market and was building out my station to manufacture something always in high demand but when I got the capital to help defend that one system that always gets overrun, it went down the toilet. Broke my spirit. I was so looking forward to the RTS parts of the game.