I think a lot of the code still exists from what Okim made. What you are describing is pretty much exactly what Okim did. If you look in IroncladsModPlugin.java, the code currently:
1) Generates 100 systems in a 10x10 grid shape, adding a little random x and y values to make the stars not perfectly aligned to a grid.
2) Generates planets, stations, moons, etc. through Okim's SystemComposer class. A faction and a 'menace' is assigned to each system based on its x and y location. This appears to be mostly for figuring out which derelict ships to spawn. With 0.8 this may be unneeded.
3) Generates hyperspace entrances automatically through a call to autogenerateHyperspaceJumpPoints()
3) Tags planets and moons with things like "food," "arid," "ore," and/or "gas" for later. The more 'ideal' worlds (terran, water, jungle, etc) get a "colonized" tag, less 'ideal' worlds (molten, barren, etc) get an "outpost" tag.
4) Sets a number of planets for each faction to own, and then goes through and picks random "colonized" planets to become planets colonized by the faction, based on location, then does the same for "outpost" planets. Some randomly selected planets that haven't been taken already become pirate bases.
5) Adds markets/conditions to each planet that has been colonized.
I can try writing/rewriting a lot of this, but I'm not sure of how I would actually test to see if it works... I suppose I might be able to set something up to override the vanilla sector generation, but that's where my lack of experience modding comes in...
Alex has a much more complicated version of this currently running to generate the non-core worlds.