Sorry for not having answered to this before... I have been quite busy lately.
About the intro for 1337, we will deal with details by email, but a couple of things here:
- We can work out the story as we like. The Elite Universe is completely invented, so could be a long time ago in a galaxy far far away
- The date... well, we know we have to invent somehting for 1337 (the number), so it could well be the year 1337 after the creation of the Galactic Cooperative of Worlds (GalCo, as it appears in the manual... there is a nice introduction there, you can have a look at it

)
- We can work out a story, maybe a bit after the original Elite, where the spacestations are no more in service, where the war with the Thargoid is at a turning point, with all the Galactic Navy effectives protecting the border of the colonized 8 galaxies, or something like that, so the order in the inner systems is kept by the local police, and some Elite pilots which are recruited here and there for specific purposes.
- I had in mind to build a stripped-down version of the 3d engine (it will require a lot of memory anyway) to use in the intro. Intelligently mixing background graphics with planets, texts, etc... and some areas where a single (or two) ships move, could reduce the amount of CPU for double-buffering.
We'll talk about this by email, if you agree...
Cheers!