Nope, no custom systems.  And ya, I do have black holes in this game.  I just lost a ship to one.  

  Center Mass.  Look around, there there.  
 
And a game with 200 plus systems is not about whooping it up with the AI, its about exploration and the undiscovered country.  I love exploring and slowly building up my empire.  Hell, the Last game I played, the AI (EA) player had just as large if not larger empire than I did, and it kicked my butt all the way back to my core systems before I started blowing up starts to stop there advance.  I then spent the next 16 hours of game play slowly out manuvering them until I had them boxed into 50 systems.  One by one, I entered each system and took there planets.  Shutting off the WP's as I did it.  I eventually asked them to surrendar, and they did.  END GAME.  That game took over 30 hours to play.