I haven't managed to get into this yet. I guess its kind of like an offline Eve Online but with proper dog fighting in space
Yes although the X games are also arguably much simpler than EvE and more importantly you are quite free to play them the complicated (industry management etc.) or the simple (blow stuff up) way. Dog fighting is very nice but not as good as Freelancer (I have yet to find a space dogfighting game better than Freelancer at dogfighting).
I believe you only really need one of the X games as they basically just sell updated versions of the same game, but with a new storyline (not sure if people do the stories or if they are worth playing the old games for)
Yep. The plots and storytelling is the most horrible I have ever seen. But there's quite a lot of lore than you can learn about. Just take AP.
Ablion Prelude seems to be the latest, and I think you need to install Terran Conflict for it
You don't need to install TC to play AP
I would get this but I don't have the will to study for a game as expansive as the X series
The minimum knowledge required to play and have fun doesn't take that long to learn (dogfighting, local trade and sector navigation) but the game doesn't explain anything properly. I would advise reading/watching a video or two to get one started. Everything can be learned ingame from there, you just need to be ready to sink a hell of a lot of time into it.