Better Balance.
A couple examples:
Smuggling should always > Legal Routes
Trade should not be the only way to make money
No "5 second fights". No ridiculous weapon setup that allows you to cut down a large freighter in only a few shots. Make Escort possible again.
Smuggling is in the legacy of Freelancer, now I personally have always had an small "Knee Jerk" reaction to hauling anything that resembles my personal opinions of real world atrocities such as slaves and drugs. I do know why they choose to portray it in Privateer, and it was inherited into Freelancer as it needed to be. The Black Market is a powerful Money Machine now and in the future, you tell someone they cannot have something, they will pay ridiculous money to prove you wrong.
As for the Durability of the Freighters,, I noticed that this became an issue in Freelancer the moment the "Capital Ship" frenzy began. The freighters where at first the "Tanks" of player space, under gunned but harder to crack when your talking top of line freighters. Once they started getting players in the Gunboats the game was never designed for them to fly the balance tilted, they had to be tougher than the freighters of course. It has just grown progressively worst the farther we have moved from the Fighter & Freighter game that it was designed to be.
I am not advocating removal of Capital Ships here, just a bit of reality check for the Super Transport Lines some MOD's have added. Maybe do as in one interesting approach, make them very hard to completely destroy. However, make the engines and generators vulnerable to damage. And for gawd sake,, No ship in any mod should carry 400 nanobots! You can see protecting it, or people ferrying nano's to the crippled ship to repair it as a fact of life..
