The galaxy has now opened up in Orion's End, with the addition of thousands of procedural worlds. Many of them are settled with unique towns and citizens. You can drive between the different towns in your speeder as you deliver packages to its residents. The galactic directory will help you locate people if you are having trouble finding them. I really feel like the bones of the game are really coming together and it will be a small jump to go from delivery jobs to bounty hunting or investigating suspects, depending upon how you want to live your life. The game still has a way to go, with a lot for work for only one person working on it, but the stage is being set for some pretty cool adventures to happen.
The new systems include:
Thousands of stars with multiple inhabited and uninhabited planets and asteroid belts.
Inhabited planets can have from one to 10+ unique procedurally generated towns, that you can drive to in your speeder.
The towns all have permanent residents that you can visit and befriend over time.
A galactic directory can be accessed on most worlds to help you find particular residents by town, planet and star system.
Deliveries to depots at the space port don't pay as well as deliveries straight to the recipient, but that may involve a long drive across the planet to make the delivery.
The system is in place for random points of interest and events to be found on these worlds while you traverse the surface, but it is still a work in progress.
I feel like this is a turning point for the game, and while it still has a lot more work to be done, every new change from here on should benefit the game enormously.
I've attached a video that is snippets from a short play session, where I delivered a package to someone waiting on another world, but it gives a small glimpse at the new systems.