Wouldn't there be extra star names for variety when a map is generated for a new game? I seem to remember that BOTF did not always have the same systems in one game versus another. Bashir

They had a list that, with the settings it had for map generation, meant that they all wont necessarily turn up on each one.

I was referring to before I expanded the list, mate. The original list only had one or two hundred starnames. Most of the systems were numbered if you had a Giant map because of the short list.

Yep, that's precisely why the list is so long. More names means more diversity, since the game randomly assigns them instead of going through the list one by one until all of the stars are named. And don't forget that the list of Star names does NOT include the names of any minor race systems either, so the entire list would be another 150-200 star names. And even on giant maps, you still don't have every single minor race on every single game, so there's even more variety there.

Must've been a really old list then. May 09 version had 1087, Jan 09 almost 700 IIRC. ~1000 should be enough most likely, maybe you could remove the longer names?
If someone is going to mod system spacing, they'll probably also mod the star names file

Yes, it was an old list. I'm referring to the list when Mike first made giant maps available.

You don't have to ask about changing the star names, i've already been working on the list since my previous post. I've removed the longest names from the list, using Excel to check for the longest, not just in terms of character length, but physical length too. I also added shorter, made up (but star-sounding) names. The list is actually even longer now.

The longest name in the list in terms of characters is Beta Christenberry at 18 characters, and the longest name in terms of physical length is Gorgonea Secunda, at 119 pixels.

The current list is 1397 names.

Alpha Matress_of_evil?

Actually, two of the names I added were Flannagan and Strobel.

And I added Stavromula Beta .

Ah, and thanks for all the fish.