..well I'm another person who likes the starting tech levels. Though maybe there should be a cost so people won't do the obvious and go for the colonization techs and planet utilization techs immediately.
I also liked the way you could go to the ship screen and use keyboard commands to go to each ship and rename it. (Now, all I need to do is compile a list of ship names to use so I don't keep staring at space when I want to name a ship and all the good ones are used.)