That's what "we nominate" means.
Totally didn't see/read the "we nominate" bit for some reason...
If we still had 3 dp that would be fine, but with 2 dp the B3 list is not that suitable for the wider galaxy. It struggles with systems beyond the ends of the cylinder in particular.
Hmm seems we have a difference in approach.
If I understand you right, you want 20-30 systems pretty much covering the whole galaxy, so they can be used for trilateration for any system?
I don't think that's the best approach, as that would mean those 20-30 systems would be *far* apart (distance wise).
Trilateration is a bit sensitive to that... (range) - As you then get *huge* (albeit slim) overlapping areas, increasing the amount of possible candidates.
In my experience it's better to have a bunch of close(ish) reference stars, as the overlapping areas are smaller then.
(the above is a simplification of course - trying to keep it short here

)
Also - and for me at least, more importantly is "the spirit" of the whole thing.
In my mind we have a small (close by) nucleus of known systems (like the SB3 set)
We then "work outwards" from there - as people spread out.
I personally find that more in the exploration spirit, than having some known systems out where no one has ever been yet.
It is obviously possibly to actually calculate the coords to something far away (1500-2000 LY I guess) given enough spread out refs (as we did with Alpha Cygni in beta).
But that is actually still rather close, considering the scale of the galaxy.
It probably is pretty manual, unless they've already built a tool to do it.
They have to have some sort of tool - I don't see Michael (or one of the devs) doing that SB3 list one star at a time.
I don't know what sort of (easy) filtering they can do - But perhaps a list of all systems from the star catalogs (as those aren't auto generated) within a 200-500 LY radius of Sol (if the SB3 list isn't feasible for some reason)