I just downloaded Aurora recently and in the game I started last night I ran into an odd problem. I was playing with the default values for everything and everything was going swimmingly for my fledgling empire. I'd found a couple good sources of minerals, started my efforts to form colonies, had a fledgling navy, and was rapidly exploring the neighboring stars. Then I discovered they were all dead ends. Including my starting system my galaxy seemed to consist of only 6 solar systems.
Is this a bug? Extreme bad luck? Something else?