What is your setting for minors in the galaxy settings?

I haven't tried Abundant. I've been playing with "Occasional" and I see a minor maybe once every five games or so. So it would seem the devs do need to look at this.

I don't have one in my current game, so I can't check this, but if I remember correctly, you have to click on their planet, then when the planet window displays in the lower left part of the galaxy window, click on the top most icon attached to the right of the planet window.

Ok, I followed instructions from Publis of NV above and they spoke to me. Gave me a mission.  Thanks.

But this is similar to something mentioned before.  We shouldn't have to look through buried menus or guess at things in the interface. Once someone clicks on the planet, the planet screen should just have a "Speak To" box that you can click.  I think previous versions of GC had that for minor and major races.