Newbie Q on starting positions

[mrflibble]

Hi there,

I am about to start my second multiplayer game of SE4, this time with 4 friends. I have been testing the placement of empires on large maps using the different type of quadrants but am annoyed with the crap placement of the empires.

Is there no way to position the empires manually? Can you somehow configure the game to place them equi-distant from each other?

In my tests sometimes a few players would be far apart, but there would always be at least 2 empires right next to each other. This is unfair to those empires IMO

Please can someone help with this. I don't want to have to re-start the game dozens of times until we get a nice placement by pure chance.

Regards,
Mark