X3, Freespace 2, and Starlancer.
X3 is probably the one for you, it is pretty much the modern successor to Elite. Complex though, very complex.
Freespace 2 and Starlancer are dog-fighting small ship combat games, I actually prefer them, but I prefer dog-fighting to trading.
Starlancer is hard to find and uses the same engine as Crimson Skies so can be hard to get working on modern GPUs, I use my netbook to play it because the GMA950 has no trouble with it.
Freespace 2 from GOG plus fs2_open files and the Freespace 1 conversion mod so you can play the Freespace campaign using the Freespace 2 engine. Whoever said Freespace 2 was great over a LAN was right. It's a real blast, not hardware intensive, and can be played with a mouse, so you don't need a joystick for everybody.
