Ive thinking about what the best opening techs. In ti3 probably the best early game tech was XRD.
With the new rules unit upgrades are something that must be worked towards rather than researched piecemeal as part of the tree
When researching a tech you have to weigh up it's abilities vs it's colour
Take Sarween tools for example. It has been down powered since the last edition but still remains a source of free resources but in terms of colour it is useful for about half the unit upgrades on the game.
Antimass deflectors remain the weakest of the four starting Technologies. This is because there are few asteroid fields and the pds modifier is less useful than say free resources or ACs.
But it's blue and therefore is needed to move towards dreadnoughts, carriers and Fighters.
Unit upgrades I think will make a real difference on tabletop and they are lumped into two parts.
On one hand there is the green blue axis which gives you dreadnought carriers and fighters. On the other hand who is the red yellow choice which gives you Destroyers Warsuns and PDS and Spacedocks.
There are other possible paths with cruisers requiring a bit of everything and a dedicated advanced fighter strategy needing carriers and space dock upgrades
A third possible consideration is your racial tech. Most of these are very powerful and make a good early game goal for the ones that are not unit upgrades. This will help your thinking as you will have a fairly good idea of what colour's you will have after completing them.
I think the key here is to work out what units you wanted to use and build tech towards upgrading them.