1) Sprite flicker is determined by attached light properties and sequential number of hardpoints they're attached to.
2) Lighting on mesh from attached lights is unsupported and won't ever work correctly due to limitations in fixed pipeline of DirectX 8.
As far as I know there's a limit of three light sources per location due to Freelancer's DX8. Usually, you have at least one source per system - it's the sun (in system file the light source is a separate entity, means, it can be not attached to the sun). Therefore, maximum of the sources you can get is like 1 or 2 additional 'dynamic' light sources.
Technically speaking the limit in API is eight, however a number of them are reserved by engine, so actual available count is fewer even. Systems sometimes have secondary light source to create more dramatic effect: hot color from visible light source and dimmed cold color (or reverse) from secondary source, typically set in opposite direction to primary. Practically four overlapping light sources is the limit for system developers. There can be many more of course but they must avoid overlapping then. THN scenes have benefit of light groups to divide them apart, but not systems.
