How do I do things?

So, I defeated the pirates a while ago, and...nothing's happened since. I still have Chruul portals popping up, but I can't talk to any of the races, and none of them are coming to me. I tried maxing out my legendary officer's level, I tried researching all techs, I tried exploring enery room on the station, I tried building tier 3 ships for all my officers with spares, nothing is making the game actually progress. Oh, and it's been over 5 years in game-time since I had any challenge at all.