In order for FL to be fun there would need to be some kind of "empire building." Something to control, something to defend, something to attack, something to build. Basically having a tradewars backend is all this game would need to interest me greatly. I think when your ship gets blown up, you need to lose the ship and get put back in your noob ship at your last save point. I think you need to be able to Build your own ports/planets/sectors, hire NPC police (and adjust the cost based on how well they fight) etc etc.
FL sucks because there is no objective. You can kill some pirate phagus but what does he lose? A little pride maybe but then he respawns, looks at the chat thing to find your location, then comes and tries to fight you again. Gae. FL needs to be able to randomly generate the universe and all the ports/commodities so that you can "reset" the game and start over with a new random universe once a group of players has a clear victory (or meets some preset objective like having 392480938420934 cash.)
Also needs to have the prices of commodities evolve over time to represent supply and demand to keep trade lanes evolving.
Graphical tradewars plz ;o