Hi m8 and welcome to the Starport.

You should definitely try multiplayer, I remember that it revealed a whole new Freelancer world to me when I tried it first.
There are lots and lots of modded and unmodded servers around. But I can only second the advise as stated before, have a good look around all those mods and try to get a bit acquainted with how things work there before you commit to one of them. There’s lots of people around who could give you a lot of info about them.