The first planned significant update will be 1.1 and will enter beta in the first week of February. We?ll be talking next week about how 1.1 will introduce a new way to collaborate with other players in the galaxy in preparation for 1.2?s major Wings update. We have some some good news for planners of long journeys - V1.1 will also have a significant increase in the maximum distance for the route planner. We?re currently looking at extending this to 1,000 light years!
Looking further ahead there will be a 1.2 update which is planned to enter beta testing in the first week of March. The focus for this update will be Wings and other multiplayer goodness. I?ll provide more detail in future updates.
The lights are orientation lights so you can align your ship to the station in a consistent way. If you enter a station with the green on your right and red on your left you will find that the docking pad numbers are arranged front to back, clockwise, starting from below you. For legacy reasons, Pad numbers 1 and 13 were reversed. This is now fixed and will be included in a future update. All other pads follow a consistent numbering convention. There is no "traffic light" system in operation.
01-23-15; Players have discovered 615,475 previously uncharted systems. community have charted just 0.00015 percent of our galaxy.
Development will continue past the December release. Currently the plan is to continue indefinitely - a game like this is never 'finished' - there is always something we can add or improve, but this date is a reasonable measure of what we think will be a great game. -David Braben
On Wednesday. Dec 9th, 2015. David Braben announced the Tuesday Dec 15th release date for v2.0 which will be considered as "early access".