At the moment, my favourite mod... amazing, because it was the very first that I ever downloaded... has to be Victor's 1.3/1.62 Mod from www.bobway.com.

Although I have tried the Rebalance series, I found that Rebalance did not maintain the same standard of consistency. That is, while some of the new/custom ships look okay (especially those from Star Wars and Babylon 5 which look ~AWESOME~), others looked like they had been modelled on paintbrush and thrown in purely for the sake of packing in as many ships as possible.

In addition, while both of these mods offer the ability to purchase trade and warships, those in Rebalance are modelled with an agravating lack of believability. The best example of this was when, having been intercepted by the LPI on route to Rochester, I was pursued by a Liberty Cruiser all of the way through the Jersey field!! On approach to Rochester, as weapons' fire from the cruiser streaked past my ship, Rogue Bloodhounds which flew out to assist me were swiftly destroyed by the cruiser which was able to dogfight with the speed and agility of a fighter jet.

In Victor's mod, on the other hand, the capital ships fly much more like you would expect: lumberring and slow, but with awesome firepower. Interestingly, however, neither mod lets you command a cargo train or a Rheinland battleship, apparently due to "issues" in the Freelancer program.