Also money. The starting financial stockpile should be customisable as well, so you could effectively have points buying of planetary infrastructure and military

GC II let you start a game and then take your 'points' and assign them to various skills or abilities. This gave much needed flavor to any base temp let race such as Terrans. As an example you could take the Government perk that gave you +20% to economy and also get more points for another 25%. I would often take this because at early-mid game I would be BROKE to the point I could not build any ships or any buildings. This often caused me to slide all research and production to ZERO and spam turns  while the population of the planets I recently colonized built back up. 

There have been statements by the Developers stating that such a system will be in but much better. We will get TWO super abilities each and you can then go on to pick others if you are so inclined.