One thing that might be very easy to implement would be the option to add entirely new sectors only reachable by special, oxp-able equipment and, as usual, defaulted as "NO" for the core game.
If you make the experiment and change the galaxy seed and number in your savegame, you find you can come up with sector numbers 9+ and completely new sectors like *snap*. So the game could easily generate these, too, I assume.
You would have to do a planetinfo.plist for 256 system then, though, but think of the possibilities. Endless new worlds and situations could be scripted out there, empty systems to be mined and crossed, unknown systems and races explored, perhaps even incursions into thargoid space itself scripted for the ELITE veterans!
That's my 0.2Cr
L
PS: For the continuity fans: If and when in the future the transgalactic wormholes collapse, the even more unstable experimental holes into even more distant parts of the milky way collapsed, too. So no contradiction with established Elite history.