Aren't there options which determine this? Addmitedly I havent tried changing them.

There are options which increase the likelihood of better planets, yes. However, if you are trying to play a game with occasional or even common habitable planets it tends to keep them in this clump of systems with similar planets, be they habitable or not on spiral maps. I have tried it with a star distribution that is more evenly spread around the galaxy (loose clusters? I cant remember) and the problems go away. This seems to be tied specifically to the spiral map type.

Maybe I'm strange like it so many other areas of the development of this game but why is the balance aimed at cooperative play for multiplayer?  This makes no sense to me, the reason I want a multiplayer 4x is to play against other players.  Even with godlike AIs players are almost certainly going to come out on top in the end especially if they are allied and spend even a little bit of time coordinating and even if they are on opposite sides of a large map.

I also want to add that in spiral games black holes tend to cluster too.  For example in my current game I left the type of galaxy random and got spiral.  In my starting range 7 black holes and 5 other stars.  Also in another plea for a bit more realism, I started on the edge of the galaxy with all those black holes which if they cluster they should cluster in he middle of the galaxy.

While I generally agree with the comments here, this is an issue that has been mentioned many times on the streams as something the dev team will always be tweaking. For example, this last stream (or maybe the one before), Paul mentioned that black hole placement was behaving in an undesired way (clumping black holes together in otherwise empty areas).

Anyhow, just thought I'd mention it and suggest we all be patient since this is still a beta and they are working out these details patch by patch.

Oh, I'm in no way under the illusion that this is a finished product. I'm a 2 year veteran of Star Citizen crowdfunding. I'm just posting feedback on areas that need improvement in case the team is unaware.

I didn't think you were under such an illusion--I just wasn't sure if you knew the devs have mentioned this as an ongoing issue for improvement. But I agree, I think it makes sense to say what you see when you see it while the game is still in beta...

I believe this is already an option under galaxy settings...

EDIT: Black Hole Frequency is under Galaxy Options when creating a new game, in the Resources section beneath Asteroids.