I think youre setting yourself up for disopointment.
Do remember, tjis is procedural game.
You can expect about same lvl of content as with rocks we have now.
Procedural is as good as what you put into the machine. The more you put in the more it has to choose from.
Take minecraft for example, without doubt the most successful procedural game ever. Every block in the world is procedural, at launch there were only a few blocks, arrangements and rules to create trees, oceans, forests, deserts, plains and a few other things I think. Underground there were caves and ravines. Then step forwards a few years and a few mods later and there's now infinitely more base building blocks to pick from and so many more arrangements both using the new and old blocks to the point I can't even start to list them. (sure MC is an infinite creativity game but the proc gen side still is very much a valid comparison).
Alright what does that mean for elite. Well in the same way the more base blocks we have (content) the more for example signal sources can be made from them. If we have generation ships, Thargoids etc we have more assets to play with, simple enough it leads to more variety and if done right a better game.* But these blocks have to be created, tested and implemented which takes time.
*I don't think the whole USS thing is the best way to do it but that's a different discussion to the one we're having here.
In the same way as above we could use the current assets in different ways for example the CZ RNG could be changed to have various ship levels depending on how long the war has been going giving the currently winning side a further advantage (also giving opposing players more ships to shoot to reverse it). Or we could have CZ's around certain existing structures or on planets etc. Same assets, similar mechanics/rules but resulting in a new option. More options = more variety. This takes less Dev time but doesn't usually have the same impact as new assets. The best implementation of these is to do them alongside new content.
An example of this in Elite is varieties such as Haz Res. Minimal assets to implement, changes to some rules but different to before.
Circling back round to planets, if a crashed station is something the Devs made it could easily be put into the procedural thing to appear on a few planets. The % probability would need to be low otherwise you won't want to store any ship on them in future for fear of it going bang
That station is a block just like mining sites, or surface bases or stations or a temple ruin or whatever else. The only question is which blocks will the devs decide have the most value in creating.
On environment to be honest there's so much to take into account on Elite (temperature, orbit, gravity, atmosphere, light etc etc etc) I expect the devs may even split different atmospheres into different updates. Or just go off-grid for a year and come back with an insane update.
I must admit the idea of a low G world with ideal conditions for insane plant/animal life excites me, giant trees, insects etc in a dark rainforest type terrain as OP wants. This is hard enough without even looking at the blocks of content you want to put in or not. The planet archetypes and varieties is arguably several blocks of content in itself but are required blocks in order to add the others like temples/crashed stations etc. Will Devs have a jungle type world, will they have several, one, none? Who knows, all depends on value and the decisions they make?
Generating these building blocks is simply a matter of time but if you build a block that's used 3 times in the billion star systems available then it's a bit of a waste. If you have a block that can be placed anywhere then it's an easy winner. The only issue is these easy blocks that appear everywhere give things a level of "same old", having the more unique stuff is the exciting part but you need the Dev time otherwise you won't get either.
Going back to my starting point though Proc Gen isn't bad. It just needs the right combination of lots of standard stuff mixed with some less standard stuff so it has a lot to choose from and can feel fresh even after a long time.
The best of these have the ability to mesh the standard/unique ones together. For example crashed ships. If you had an abandoned settlement and a flag that said this is combinable with crashed ships then boom you have yourself a new variety of content blocks by creating a 3rd block out of 2 existing ones. Imagine then if crashed ships could be put into say 20 other content blocks in that way you can create a whole load of cool stuff that keeps you wondering what you'll find next, a mining outpost with SRV debris around where raiders got taken out by skimmers? Fungal life and Geysers both together where you can believe the fungi require the geysers to survive. And that's just a few I thought up of on the spot with the limited building blocks we have today Etc etc etc
Edit: An Edit to let you know this post has a lot of Edits.
