1. How does everyone play? Do you all have a HOTAS? I think at least to begin with I would just be using a controller, as I cant see M+KB being great for this. If I get really into it then maybe I'll look at a cheap HOTAS.
If you've played any arcadey space games on M&KB, like Nightstar, Everspace, House of the Dying Sun, even Freelancer, then you'll have some idea. A good number of people do.
Many have just a cheap joystick, like the Saitek FLY5 or a basic stick with throttle feature of some kind.
You can even get reasonable full-on HOTASes for about £100, too - One thing I will say is that, if you get into this, a HOTAS does make it a lot more fun!!
2. Is it worth getting the Commander Deluxe Edition? What extra does that provide? It says Elite Dangerous, Commander Pack and Horizons Season Pass, the only details I can find say the Horizon season pass gets you access to landing on planets.
This is what Horizons gives you:
https://www.frontierstore.net/games/elite-dangerous-cat/elite-dangerous-horizons-dlc.html
Basically Multi-Crew multiplayer mode and ship-launched fighters, customisable avatars, Engineered upgrades, landing on and exploration all around full-scale planets, plus a load of additional mission features and gameplay additions not available in the base game.
The Deluxe edition also has a set of cosmetic extras for the three most popular starting ships.
3. Is it suitable to dip in and out of or does it take quite a big commitment? My time is kind of sporadic when it comes to games.
There will be a bit of a learning curve to start with and it'll take a bit of practice to get the hang of everything, partly because there's so much to do. There are elements of realism combined with enough pure gameplay to keep it on the fun side.
But you don't have to spend night after night and every weekend playing, if you don't want to. You can pick up exactly where you left off. It will just take longer to progress... but the whole idea of the Elite games has always been that it's a long-haul game that takes time, rather than something 10 minutes long with three lives.