I generally think that it's important to keep as close to a design as possible when remaking a ship, station, tradelane or any other art-related part of the game. However I also think that, in 2020, we can expect to at least have people smooth properly without edge-splitting that results in Off-the-Chart Vertex counts, LOD's and other things that are important for the performance of a game and in that regard I do think that heightening the standards was a good thing.
There's also the issue that some of the "old toys" are outright broken and need an overhaul if you want to ensure smooth game performance. Nephilim is an extreme example of this, I think it's one of the more iconic ships of the mod but it is so outright flawed and broken that any modeller looking at its mesh and textures for more than 2 seconds would just shake their head, not to mention the FPS stuttering and tanking it causes when it enters rendering distance on other peoples devices no matter how strong they are.
Last words are for fools who have not yet said enough.
