[Smiling Spectre]

I didn't see Privateer, so I cannot vote.

Elite is good, but strictly "make fun for yourself" type. Sandbox at best. I played it to death for about 3 months, but then got burned out.

Two bug/features got me here also, both max-speed-related. On the max speed game doesn't calculate at all the way and movement at the certain distance. So it immediately results in two consequences:

1. If you are on planet, and set auto-pilot to the any visible point (station or city), turning max-speed automatically teleports you into this point. (This one is beneficial, actually, as it allows to skip all this tedious flying in/outs.)
2. If during space flying any enemy falls into "no-calculating" range, it immediately teleports into closest range and triggers dogfight. (And it means that _any_ space encounter always one-to-one, regardless of an amount of ships in a pack - very dissatisfied!).

I, for myself, can recommend X-series from Egosoft (X - Beyond the Frontier, X2: The Threat, etc.) They are more economic-centric though (you have much more options with trade/production than with space fights - up to your own space docks and capital ships) and with limited space (unlike endless space of Elite). Also, I heard good things about Evochron series, but never seen it myself.