There's already a search feature in the game, but it only lets us search by name. I want to search for specific kinds of objects (ie. a K0V star, a white dwarf or a neutron star, allowing the user to be very specific or very broad) so that I don't spend hours searching the galaxy (and others) by hand just to find one object that fits the specifications I want.
Another thing I wanted was to be able to change planet type in the editing menu. That and perhaps tooltips to explain what specific values control.
I don't know if it'd take away from the exploring aspect. You already know what any star is if you click on it, this just means you can find that one star type you're looking for in the sea of billions without spending hours clicking on random dots, and then explore it and go back to grabbing a number out of a hat as a method of exploring.
Actually, a search by object type function would be useful for the catalog and a search by object function should be integrated into the new wiki feature that's in 0.97.