[Aussie Gamer]

Another way is that you have a racial trait say called " Advanced Reasearch Race" worth 3000 points.
You then have them get an extra 10,000 RP for the entire game that way they get a big boost at the start but it does not really make that much difference later on.

Could do the same for Intel projects as well.

Could even have a race that can build any one project in one turn with a boost ablility for no extra cost in resources.

But I also liked the extra tech level boost from SE3 but with RP then this will be hard to do.