I'm thinking of trying to give every player 5-6 TG's (or something) fromt he start of the game. they get one race pr default but can buy additional to choose from for 1-2 TG's each. 

lets say you just want the one race to choose from, you would get 6 TG's
if you instead want to choose from 4 different races, you don't get any TG's

ofcourse all race sheets should be handed out simultaniously, so you couldnt just buy additional if you didn't get what you wanted the first/second/third time

 My friends and I put all the systems in the middle face-down and draw. If we REALLY don't like it, we can mulligan, but you can always mulligan if you've been the race before (there's still a few races that very rarely get into games. Somehow, Muaat I think is in every single game we play). I really like the idea of writing down the one you want to be, and going from there if more than one person wrote the same race down.

As far as the Yssaril discussion goes, I think they were the best race pre-expansions, but you could make a VERY good case Sol takes that spot post-expansions.

We are still experimenting with techniques of how to choose races.

What we've done the last couple times is the following:

1) Everyone has +1 Political Card

2) All homeplanets are facedown on the table

3) Speaker is chosen randomly

4) Everyone, starting with the speaker, chooses 1 system-tile.

5) Those who are not satisfied with their race, may, again in order, pay 1 Political Card to choose a 2nd system tile.

The player may then choose between the too.

6) This goes on until everyone is either satisfied, or noone has PCs anymore (which cannot happen in 6-8 player games)

Players then have to choose from their hand of systemtiles, without revealing their choices.

Then we decide on the mode of galaxy-setup we want to use, but I guess that's a different topic :)

Alternatively, we skip the extra PC, and just do two rounds of picking. Three only if we're <=5 players and everyone chose races they already played at least once. Since PCs are equivalent to TradeGoods, we rather use PCs for this, since they have much more fun-potential, and are often burnt in the first two turns for economy-boosts anyway. Which is a little sad after all.

Maybe for a new expansion (*coughcough*) it would be interesting to force more PCs to stay in the game by some means.

We're still in a phase where everyone wants to try out everything at least once, and I guess that phase is rather long anyway with over a dozen races ;)

I deal out 3 races to each player, and the two remaining to myself. Once everyone has chosen, I deal out a 3rd one to myself from those not chosen. Then I choose my race.

2.1 Race Selection
Each player has four dierent options of choosing a race. Players who have fewer choices
to select from than others are compensated with Trade Goods according to the following
table.

Option                                                     Bonus Trade Goods
Select a specific race                                         0 TG
Draw 3 random races, select one                   2 TG
Draw 2 random races, select one                   3 TG
Draw 1 random race                                          4 TG

The options are chosen secretly and simultaneously. Players who choose a specic race
reveal their choice rst. Then take one control marker from all races that are left and
have the other players randomly draw 1 to 3 markers according to their chosen option.
The draw and race selection is done secretly.
Players now receive Trade Goods according to the table above, but only according to
the dierence between best and worst option. For example, if one player chooses to draw
three races and all other players choose to draw one, then one player receives 0 Bonus
TGs and all others 2 Bonus TGs.
In the rare case, that 2 players choose to pick the same race, roll a die to decide who
gets to play the chosen race. The other player immediately needs to choose another
selection option.

Read about our other Setup rules here

And check out our PBF Forum here.

 I had made a Random Race Generator. Every player rolls a d20, and whatever race came up they were that race. On a 18 or 19 or if they rolled a race that someone has already selected, they would Roll Again. Only on a 20 will a player would be allowed to pick their own race. I tried it with the gaming group here, and they liked it a lot.

Personally, I like it when people don't get what they want (me included).  It spices up the game when you have to play something you are not comfortable with.  I hand out to each player three cards and they have to pick two cards (One they love and one they hate), and discard the third.  Then they mix them up, and randomly trade one to a person of their choice.  Then with the two cards they now have they can pick which one to play.  You just have to hope you didn't give up the one you want and took the one they wanted.    

If you can't tell we've been playing this for way too long. 

There is no such thing as to play this game too long…

If the Yssaril do come up in a game at random why not use a house rule to hold an emergency "Galactic Council" where all the other players elect another player to "deal with them". Given the nature of the open diplomacy in TI3 the elected player may aid rather than raid the Yssaril player. Could make for an interesting alliance if the whole table turns on the Yssaril and their Galactic Council appointed overseer. 2v4 is much different than 1v5.

IDK, maybe that's too much trouble for you but i just hate the idea of taking anything our of a game, I'd rather find a way to restore balance

We are always free to choose races. Usually, everyone knows which race he wants to play  and the elections are not the same. Less frequently, we randomly choose 3 races and take 1 from them and the other 2 return.

My last few games I've dealt 3 races for each player to choose from, but now I've decided to only deal 2 in the future to prevent the same races from being chosen every time.

We just hand out 2 random races and each player picks. Simple and done in seconds.

We hand out 2 or 3 random races to each player and you choose from them.  The number we hand out depends on how many players we have.  If we can deal out 3 to everyone we will, but if we have too many players and can't then we do 2.

It's still a bit random, but you have a little bit of choice.

Works for us. 

 1. Either generate a map or make a preset one.

2. Put a token on one places. Now each player rolls a d% to randomly get a place around the table with highest gets a token and everyone else takes his place in clockwise order.

3. Optionally every player may name a race and pick it if no one objects

4. Deal then all the remaining homeworlds stack to remaining players. Everyone chooses one and discards the rest.

5. Roll d% for a speaker.

Our group decided that this order reflects both facts that we do not choose a world to live in (steps 1 and 2) while geography (or astrography in this case) actually defines cultural features (reflected by racial abilities).

It really works as particularly poor region usually gets either Mentak or Saar, some isolated star cluster is a great for Hacan merchants while adventurous Creuss or raiding Naalu usually settle around wormholes. It's always really nice to give a game a big amount of fluff, especially as vast an epic as TI3.