I only see one positive thing with textures, eye candy. They may look cute.
Now the negative points.
They obstruct visibility (e.g. HUD (-radar), (downscaled) item symbols).
To me textures look uglier than (antialiased) lines (e.g. ships).
Textures simply do not improve the game for me. Also I do not think that they
attract newbies.
Textures probably add quite a bit of code to the client. It simplifies client
maintenance if useless code is removed.
XPilot does not need "spicier" graphics. It needs newbie-help and a working
setup (in-client key-configuration).