I have found that when I do my first solve and sync, it runs as supposed with 200 regions.
After it finishes I go back to settings and see that it has set back to 3000. I set it to 200 again and then run sequence and it sticks for the rest of the night.
But yes, I have to remember to do that each night.
It happened to me numerous times last night 
For the past year or more I have set Platesolve 2 max to 100 with fail over to astrometry.net. I have never ever seen this behavior. It always stays at 100. So clearly something random is going on here. I am running on an i7-3770 CPU @ 3.4ghz, with 8GB ram, 64 bit Windows 10 Pro, with an SSD for drive C. Have no idea if any of that matters.
I would suggest for those where this continues to happen regularly, just shift to astrometry.net as the only solver. For me it solves almost every target in less than 10 seconds, often around 6. Slightly slower than Platesolve 2 if it is able to solve. When it can’t, it takes FOREVER to get to 3000, and then you solve with astrometry.net anyway.
This is not random, it is repeatable. It happens when I do a manual solve and sync at the beginning of every session. I just go to the control panel plate solve tab and reset it to 100. After that it stays at 100. It’s only when dual a manual solve and sync that this occurs.
The same thing happens to me. Like Joel, I make sure to set the max to 100 each session. Otherwise it defaults to Max 3000. I have just made the decision to live with the glitch.
Thanks for the reproduction steps @joelshort. I’ll see if we can address this now that we have a manner to replicate it.
Jared
Resolved in version 3.1 (not in beta)