In my current game I've settled 6 systems and explored 52. Apart from the usual spoiler populations, I haven't found any hint of an NPR, and my trigger finger is getting itchy.
If I turn up the "NPR Generation Chance" on the Game Details pane that comes up when I launch Aurora, and before I hit Select, will that affect the game I'm loading? I had imagined that that was a baked-in property of the universe, but if I can change it on the fly, that would probably go a long way toward curing my Empty Universe problem.