Well keep in mind some star's probably do have dozens of planets. Its just the only way to detect planets is a rather cumbersome process (that is still being refined) which involves looking for variations in star light which could hit that a planet has just passed by. In the next decade we are almost certain to jump from around 500 planets discovered to well into the thousands. Also anything besides a Star is considered a "planet" in Sins, so by this definition asteroids alone would give our solar system hundreds of planets.

That astronomy bit aside, some maps like doppelgangers are made up of small solar systems with a hand full of planets, so try one like that. If that still doesn't meet your taste, download the galaxyforge and make a map to your hearts content. The in game map designer might also be able to more crudely do what you want, but keep it somewhat random and in much less time.

It's a great game if you can get past this part, especially for online multiplayer against human opponents (which is the "real" Sins game).  Once you get up to speed you'll probably accept it as a game and never contemplate this issue again.

I made a map of our own solar system one time using colonizable asteroids for the mid sized moons and ice planets for some of the bigger moons orbiting the gas giants.  Guess what, our own solar system has a ton of gravwells when made into a Sins map.

Some solar systems may have almost no planets, some probably have hundreds, counting large moons.

You can also make maps with many star systems if you choose, the custom map generator lets you do that.

The problem with realism if you need to have orbital paths and movement and the affect of gravity wells on jump paths to make it "realistic".  As most games do, these things are abstracted in favor of play simplicity.

We don't have holodeck games yet.  Have to deal with it.  LaGrange points, gravitational slingshot trajectories and movement into and out of gravity wells just are too much to simulate and have the sort of play present.

Ok, so that's just being silly. There are different levels of realism, I never said i wanted the game to be 100% accurate and to have to need the power of 20 computers to calculate the trajectories of faster than light travel.

I'm a fan of star trek and I liked galactic civilizations 2, so the bizarre layout of this game was quite jarring for me. I may give it a go but I'm not sure how anyone at stardock could have even designed the game like this and thought it was a good idea

This was debated and thought about during the design. But I don't think you guys realize how boring and predictable it would be. Every planet close to the star would have to be barren/volcanic. Every planet in the habitable zone would have to be Terran. Every planet farther out would be barren or gas giant. Can you play on essentially the same map for a year? It may be realistic, but it's not "fun". It's boring, it's unbalanced, and it's utterly predictable. This is one good case where fun trumps realism.

Says who? Our technology is nowhere near good enough to detect earhlike planets easily. Even some of the ones we have found at several times larger than Earth and some are still being debated (like Gliese). Just because our solar system only has 1 (currently), doesn't mean that's the rule of the universe. The only planets our technology reliably allows us to find are massive gas giants, they make up the vast majority of known planets.

In that respect, the only confirmed peculiarity in Sins is the relative rarity of gas giants.  Most randomly generated maps have... one or two tops.

Anyways, if you need a justification, there's actually a relatively simple one.  Systems with lots of profitable, habital planets are more likely to be fought over.  The small systems with no resources and scant habitable planets probably don't see much real fighting.