Search Problem in AS3

I've identified an issue (or a possible one anyway) in Astrosynthesis 3 with searching over large sectors. I have several sectors that I've generated in AS3 that are each 50ly in radius (they're spherical sectors), and across all of them the Search or Advanced Search functions will not return more than 1001 search results for any given category that I search for. Usually it's 1000 though, not 1001.

The result of this seems to be that it will only find data returns within the outer "fringe" of the sectors being searched and completely misses any systems or objects that qualify for my search params that are further into the sphere's interior. I can run a search on a specific system or object located anywhere within the sector and the software will return accurate results - it's only when running general searches that it seems to stop short at around 1000 results.

I've tried playing around with the "New Star Sector" generation settings and haven't found anything that seems to (positively) impact these results. So far, everyone one of these larger sectors have had the "System Frequency" set to the lowest setting. Also, I had the "Generate Populations" checkbox unchecked, though like others here I've found that this does not prevent the software from generating populations in any way, so I don't suppose it matters whether it's checked or not.

When attempting to run searches on systems or objects using more restrictive params (such as running a search only for black holes) it seems to return accurate, sector-wide results, so long as the total bodies it finds number less than 1001.

I've attempted to duplicate this issue with increasingly smaller sectors, and the problem seems to go away for sectors of radius less than about 16 or 17 ly - though again, this seems to be because the number of possible returns for searches like "Habitable" drops below 1001. The cutoff seems to have less to do with the size of the sector and more to do with the number of total bodies that the software has to search through - though I'm by no means 100% certain of that.

What I'm not sure of is whether this problem is specific to my environment or not, since I haven't been able to test this out on more than one machine (running Windows XP, sp3, with all of 2GB in RAM). It's possible that my computer is simply crapping out, though I do have to wonder about that to some extent, since I regularly run large queries in full SQL that are meant to Select, Truncate, Delete, Update, or Alter data sets much larger than a mere 1000 rows. Still, anything's possible, I suppose.

So, any thoughts on what might be causing this? And can anyone else duplicate this issue? (Cuz if others can build sectors 50ly radius or larger and run searches for something like "Habitable" and get extensive, apparently thorough search returns, then that would seem to make it an environmental problem on my end.)

P.S.-- Why was the option to generate Sectors with "clustered" stars removed? This was easily my favorite option when generating a new sector! :(

Comments

  • Centimane wrote:
    I've identified an issue (or a possible one anyway) in Astrosynthesis 3 with searching over large sectors. I have several sectors that I've generated in AS3 that are each 50ly in radius (they're spherical sectors), and across all of them the Search or Advanced Search functions will not return more than 1001 search results for any given category that I search for. Usually it's 1000 though, not 1001.

    The search is actually designed to stop at 1000 results, to prevent it from returning too much data. On a map with a million bodies, asking for all 'inhospitable' would basically lock the machine up for hours.

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