I wanted to create a separate thread from this since I think its something that wouldn't be added to the game in the immediate future.
It would be cool if there was a setting or something to generally cause multiple NPRs (of the same species) to spawn together in the same system. I always felt like there was a certain missing aspect of political diversity with the NPRs that otherwise would exist in a lot of custom player startups. It would be a cool feature in my opinion, to come across a star system with several different empires, maybe even spread across several planets in the system, which are all notionally at peace to begin with but have the potential to wind up in conflict with eachother that you could pick sides with, for instance.