Why would a planetary station not appear in search results?

[Buggy Boy]

I searched for a specific station name (plus variations) but it didn't come up in the results. What could cause this to happen? Thanks.

Note: I know the station exists and the name is exactly as I entered it in the search box on the galaxy map.

[Sighman]

Was it one with an apostrophe and an S on the end? If so, maybe apostrophes are stripped out.

I ended up using Inara to find it.

[funkynutz]

Are you playing Legacy, Horizons, or Odyssey? If you're in Legacy or Horizons, it could be an Odyssey settlement.

[Buggy Boy]

It did have an apostrophe and S on the end, however there was a similar named one that also had an apostrophe S and that one did appear in the results list, just not this specific one.

Nothing to do with game version as I am landed at that station right now, I had to look it up on the internet to find out which system it was in. Just disappointed that I had to come out of the game in order to do that.

If everyone had to 'cheat' (i.e. use tools outside of the game) in order to find this particular station then it's a game bug.

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

It did have an apostrophe and S on the end, however there was a similar named one that also had an apostrophe S and that one did appear in the results list, just not this specific one.

Nothing to do with game version as I am landed at that station right now, I had to look it up on the internet to find out which system it was in. Just disappointed that I had to come out of the game in order to do that.

If everyone had to 'cheat' (i.e. use tools outside of the game) in order to find this particular station then it's a game bug.

The galmap 'search' will only show X number of results. (e.g. 20). If yours is number 21, you're out of luck.

I don't know if the results are sorted by distance from your current location, or alphabetically.

[Buggy Boy]

Originally posted by Sighman:

The galmap 'search' will only show X number of results. (e.g. 20). If yours is number 21, you're out of luck.

I don't know if the results are sorted by distance from your current location, or alphabetically.

I tried searching for the exact station name (as it is in the game) and it returned nothing, also tried slight variations.

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

Originally posted by Sighman:

The galmap 'search' will only show X number of results. (e.g. 20). If yours is number 21, you're out of luck.

I don't know if the results are sorted by distance from your current location, or alphabetically.

I tried searching for the exact station name (as it is in the game) and it returned nothing, also tried slight variations.

If it's the one from the xmas event, I had the same issue. The one station which shows with a 's when you search without adding the 's, does not show when you DO type the 's (that returns no results at all, even the one that showed previously.)

Therefore, I'm guessing the apostrophe is filtered out, probably because it's a special character in SQL databases. So it's searching for 'Sighmans Station' even if you type 'Sighman's'

[Buggy Boy]

Originally posted by Sighman:

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

I tried searching for the exact station name (as it is in the game) and it returned nothing, also tried slight variations.

If it's the one from the xmas event, I had the same issue. The one station which shows with a 's when you search without adding the 's, does not show when you DO type the 's (that returns no results at all, even the one that showed previously.)

Therefore, I'm guessing the apostrophe is filtered out, probably because it's a special character in SQL databases. So it's searching for 'Sighmans Station' even if you type 'Sighman's'

It is that XMas one, but a search without the 's does return a result that includes 's at the end which is what confused me. I suppose it's possible that the search results are clipped to 10 results or whatever, but that's kinda BS as how is anyone supposed to find the things that aren't shown? If this is the case then a simple scroll bar shouldn't be too hard for a competent software dev team to include. Also, they really should be able to include an apostrophe in an SQL search, it's pretty easy to escape such things. Next time I'm in the game I'll try a few other search strings, see if it can actually return this particular station at all somehow.

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

Originally posted by Sighman:

If it's the one from the xmas event, I had the same issue. The one station which shows with a 's when you search without adding the 's, does not show when you DO type the 's (that returns no results at all, even the one that showed previously.)

Therefore, I'm guessing the apostrophe is filtered out, probably because it's a special character in SQL databases. So it's searching for 'Sighmans Station' even if you type 'Sighman's'

It is that XMas one, but a search without the 's does return a result that includes 's at the end which is what confused me. I suppose it's possible that the search results are clipped to 10 results or whatever, but that's kinda BS as how is anyone supposed to find the things that aren't shown? If this is the case then a simple scroll bar shouldn't be too hard for a competent software dev team to include. Also, they really should be able to include an apostrophe in an SQL search, it's pretty easy to escape such things. Next time I'm in the game I'll try a few other search strings, see if it can actually return this particular station at all somehow.

In a game with 400 billion star systems, implementing a scroll bar for search results isn't feasible. Instead, they'll have set a limit on the 'select' so it only returns 15-20 matches. (I'm only guessing about the SQL, the reason for the issue, and pretty much everything else.)

What they don't want is several thousand players hitting the galmap and typing 'station' or 'settlement' and returning data sets with hundreds of thousands of entries for them to scroll through.