At the moment there are two major issues with the galaxy map search function.
The first is that the generic systems (those with names like WREGOE AB-C A1-23) show up in upper case in the galaxy map and when you type them into the search bar, but often have a mix of upper and lower case characters in their names. The result is that if you cut and paste system names into the search, it'll very often not find the system you're looking for. Obviously its not an issue if you're cutting and pasting from a netlog derived route plan, but for on-the-fly group navigation, it's a monumental pain in the Asp. There is a workaround (always share system names in lower case), but this should be something that the search function does itself, because it's not remotely obvious what is happening.
The second thing is much worse. There are a lot of system names that resolve to completely different systems. I'm not talking about those systems that have more than one valid name, I'm talking about searching for one system that is 20LYs away and coming up with an entirely different one 135LYs aways. Last night's FGE team explorations ran into all kinds of problems with this, especially in systems with the WREGOE prefix. They don't even come up with other WREGOE systems sometimes and resolve to HIP systems instead so it's not a case of typo searching. Furthermore, the searched-for systems DO exist but you have to find them using coordinates. I can't say for sure if the problem is exclusive to those, but they are the ones that we had the worst issues with.
These are only problems for group-based exploration, and as most groups are in civilised space and most explorers are running solo (and therefore don't have to manage group navigation) it probably hasn't come up for most people. But it will over time and it's a real issue for cooperative exploration.
Unless this is fixed, or we're able to share route-planned routes with other players or have the ability to limit our jump range for route-planning, the 1000LY route-planner is going to cause more problem than it solves for anyone who wants to explore with friends. At the moment the only way players can stay together on the same route is for the lowest jump-ranged ship to plan the route and share the next system name before each jump. And even that doesn't work as smoothly as it should.
The first is that the generic systems (those with names like WREGOE AB-C A1-23) show up in upper case in the galaxy map and when you type them into the search bar, but often have a mix of upper and lower case characters in their names. The result is that if you cut and paste system names into the search, it'll very often not find the system you're looking for. Obviously its not an issue if you're cutting and pasting from a netlog derived route plan, but for on-the-fly group navigation, it's a monumental pain in the Asp. There is a workaround (always share system names in lower case), but this should be something that the search function does itself, because it's not remotely obvious what is happening.
The second thing is much worse. There are a lot of system names that resolve to completely different systems. I'm not talking about those systems that have more than one valid name, I'm talking about searching for one system that is 20LYs away and coming up with an entirely different one 135LYs aways. Last night's FGE team explorations ran into all kinds of problems with this, especially in systems with the WREGOE prefix. They don't even come up with other WREGOE systems sometimes and resolve to HIP systems instead so it's not a case of typo searching. Furthermore, the searched-for systems DO exist but you have to find them using coordinates. I can't say for sure if the problem is exclusive to those, but they are the ones that we had the worst issues with.
These are only problems for group-based exploration, and as most groups are in civilised space and most explorers are running solo (and therefore don't have to manage group navigation) it probably hasn't come up for most people. But it will over time and it's a real issue for cooperative exploration.
Unless this is fixed, or we're able to share route-planned routes with other players or have the ability to limit our jump range for route-planning, the 1000LY route-planner is going to cause more problem than it solves for anyone who wants to explore with friends. At the moment the only way players can stay together on the same route is for the lowest jump-ranged ship to plan the route and share the next system name before each jump. And even that doesn't work as smoothly as it should.
At first I thought I had misspelled some of the system names and it was driving me crazy. Wish I had known about this bug before exploring for 2 days and marking systems with metallic asteroid fields. Ah well. Odd that it's not consistent. For example, search for Yembo and it resolves just fine. Search for Ethere and it resolves to some empty point in space. I could be wrong but I believe Wikmunda does the same thing.