This is not a QoL request or a “nice to have”. I have been playing Empyrion since April 2016, with around 1400 hours played. This is not an extreme number, but it is enough to go far beyond the early game and fully master the basic mechanics. At the early stage, Empyrion is genuinely engaging. Planet exploration, travelling between systems, and the feeling of a large and rich galaxy work very well. The scale and density of the galaxy are a strong side of the game, and this deserves appreciation. The problem appears later. Already after 100–200 hours of gameplay, when the basic mechanics are mastered and the focus shifts from planetary survival to meaningful POI exploration, the Registry becomes unusable. POIs quickly accumulate into the hundreds and thousands, and the Registry turns into a long, noisy list. Finding an already discovered location by name is impossible. There is effectively no way to navigate your own progress. The personal effect looks like this. I want to return to a POI I have already found. I understand that searching for it will take a lot of time with no guarantee of success. As a result, I simply abandon the idea and do not go there. At some point it becomes clear that exploring new sectors and planets no longer makes sense, because using the results of that exploration is practically impossible. Content keeps accumulating, but access to it is lost. Exploration stops not because of difficulty or danger, but because there are no navigation tools. This is especially painful in a large and rich galaxy — there is a lot of content, but it cannot be used in a systematic way. At this stage I seriously consider stopping playing, not because the game lacks content or quality, but because the core exploration loop stops working. As a result, the “interest → search → discovery → return” loop breaks. Players stop engaging with POIs. Interest fades silently, without bug reports or complaints. Nothing architectural is required to address this problem. A text search by name inside the Registry is sufficient. The filtering should apply only to already discovered entries. No access to hidden data. No gameplay changes. The Registry already stores POI names. A substring search solves the navigation problem exactly at the stage where the game begins to reveal its true scale. Right now, the absence of such a search directly discourages experienced players from engaging with POIs.
I am 1000% behind a search for the registry. What I've found CAN help is using bookmarks on the galaxy map to at least mark interesting systems so you can go back to them later. Or maybe keeping notes on an LCD screen on your ship, or in a Steam overlay note. But yeah a search function would still be a really nice QoL change.
The way a search works, letter by letter is going to put to much strain on the database, it might work for single player but not for multiplayer As long we dont find a good solution that works in both mode's nothing will be done for it
