In Civilization one can choose to start a game in a 'late' era such as starting in the Industrial Era rather than prehistory. This was a feature I enjoyed much and while it is less meaningful for ES I would still like to see it here. We play the same early game over and over again - it would be nice to be able to start as high-tech factions for fast games every once in a while.

Give a player option (four checkboxes) to have any combination of corresponding research trees already researched when a player starts a new game?

Starting techs and colonies option would be nice.

I believe Distant Worlds also has such an option, but the galaxy is actually also much more explored and you have already quite some colonies, which are rather well developed. I would like this option.