Development Plans

The expansions include significant new features such as seamless freeform (manual pitch/yaw/roll) atmospheric flight and landings and on-foot and out-of-ship activities (such as FPS combat, walking around and boarding ships, walking in stations and walking and driving vehicles on full 1:1 scale populated living planets), multi-player crew and player executive controlled capital ships.

Frontier intends to release small, free updates after launch. Expansions that include significant new features and content will have to be purchased.

For example, the initial roadmap is to add these features over the following expansions (in no particular order):

Landing / driving / prospecting on airless rocky planets, moons & asteroids
Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships
Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports
Accessing richly detailed planetary surfaces
Availability of giant ‘executive control’ ships to players

The scope for Elite is huge, so a sensible strategy is used to add to the game in stages.

Keep in mind that the game has been well planned and designed from the start with all these features in mind (it is not an afterthought) and Frontier Developments already has the technology for this.