Can you have empires with starting ships?

[Dralasite]

Is there an easy way to give starting empires ships? I could think of some cool things you could do with this.

The only way I could think of would be for the host of the game to play an independant empire with a special tech tree that would allow them to build the ships in a few turns. Then they could gift the ships to the real players, abandon their planet and go jump in a black hole (or self destruct, or whatever). But that sure would be a lot of work!

Search didn't reveal anything about this, but if there is already another thread, just point me to it.