IIRC it's no on both counts.

The starting cash is hard coded. Nothing you change can affect that.

The starting ships, well you can't just start with a scout, not unless you create a custom map, then i think it is possible.

You can make your own ship style and make some cosmetic changes to the ships, but i beleive their function is hard coded as well.

A suggestion you could do though to make the game less funded at the start is make all your techs that you would go after first much dearer. Or even some of the Planetary Improvemnts. Adjusting the cost of techs and PI's is moddable, but of course that cost will be throughout the game, and for the AI too for shared PI's or any AI with the same tree as you.

Perhaps Zyx, or Dsep will come allong and shed some more light on this for you.

the easy way to fix it is create a tech to make you alot of money each turn just keep the AI value 0 otherwise the computers AI will research it.Use this as an example our just copy and paste it to your tech tree it should work for all versions of the game.

 </Culture>
    <Culture ID="Ultimate Funds">
        <DisplayName>Ultimate Funds</DisplayName>
        <Cost>200</Cost>
        <Description>Why be rich when we can be really greedy.</Description>
        <Details>create money really fast</Details>
        <Requires>UniversalTranslator</Requires>
        <Category>Economics</Category>
        <EconomicsAbility>20000</EconomicsAbility>
        <Model>translator0</Model>
        <AIValue>0</AIValue>
    </Culture>
</Technologies>

well, a tech with a -100 EconomicsAbility that all races start with, would definitely slow down everyone's economy.

This isn't true at all. you could make everything more expensive so that 3000bc acts more like 300bc or you could change the layout of the tech tree, so that more advanced techs are much more expensive. thus, slowing down the pace of the game.

-Dave

If you want more BC, then follow foxthree's advice.

Well, the tech advancement pace is ok at "Very slow". It is just the starting money and starting ships I want to change. I hate that the AI buys several colony ships right off the bat, making the early game a hectic colony rush, instead of a slow, epic, gradually evolvolving game. In Civ 4 for example, you start with no city, one settler, one warrior and no money. In Gal Civ 2 I wish it would have been no start money, and only a scout available. I also dislike that you get a space miner for free, and that space mining does´n´t cost you anything.

I´m disappointed in the moddability of Gal Civ 2, I must admit...

You could try my asa custom racemod, setting a tech and associated PI for each race, probably a shared tech with high AI priority and 0 research cost, aka already researched, will solve it also.

I'd expect the AI to instantly rush buy eg. a 2000$ production boosting PI.

Leaving 1000 for either  one colony ship or whatever just as asa do,all could do it.

Then you have a really race to the stars, by outproducing the AI with colony ships ^^

to stop the colony rush, just make the colonization module require a tech that the AI has to research. This is done in TBL