During a lengthy stream, Frontier talked about the upcoming changes to Elite, the galaxy, various parts of the UI and some very much welcomed changes to the new player experience...

The first change, that's actually not a change, is the rebranding of community goals - now titled Interstellar initiatives. Basically, these will turn out to be a month-long event, curated by the dev team which will have a long-term effect on the galaxy. Be it a new module, some superpower changes or an addition to a line-up of megaships or stations. Basically, nothing new - just a new fancy way of implementing more meaningful community goals. The hope for the Interstellar initiatives is to become the actual content that will keep players ingame until the big promised patch (we know nothing about) scheduled for the end of 2020. comes along.

Next, we have some overhauls of the NPE, mostly dealing with the UI which will make a lot of stuff more obvious now, and how the absolute newbies to the game start out. Instead of being tossed right into the harsh galaxy - newly created commanders will have the option to start inside a network of permit-locked systems which will be newbro friendly and contain missions easily doable even in the trusty Sidey.

In addition - The Pilot Handbook is being added which will serve as your ship manual with various useful info and guides. And speaking of new and inexperienced players - Frontier will be adding the new Advanced docking module that enables commanders to dock and undock automatically, as well as use it in supercruise to drop out near stations or planetary bases as long as you keep your ship pointed at the right location. To make things even easier - an option to throttle down to zero when exiting hyperspace is also being added.

Now, many players complained about adding modules like these into the game since it's literally making you NOT fly your ship and interact with it even less than you would normally (and we all know how much time you actually spend looking at the black void waiting for the timer to tick down), however - it is an optional module that will in no way impact senior commanders and their fits. It might make some ganks even funnier however.

This update will implement various small UI changes and icons that will serve as an indicator of various activities and difficulty level of potential sites you can enter. So, nothing much there, but a very nice little convenience update that will also certainly help newer players get their feet wet with different activities across the galaxy.

You can check out the complete reveal below (starts at 13:10)