For me at least, the layout of the starmap is very important before I actually consider if the other settings are for me.
So a map preview on the join game screen would be great.
Actually this would be quite nice, although it would fall apart on all dark games and games with the dark start option (which are quite a few).
IIRC , I think many many many months ago, Jay set a lot of galaxies dark, because players who did not like their starting position would leave the game, re-join repeatedly to try and get into a better starting position, while the game was still waiting to fill up with the player quota.
This was a form of unfairness that Jay seems to have remedied.
So then for this feature request, maybe an all white map preview could be shown, but without the colors and shapes of each empire ? Maybe the preview could be smallish, or slightly fuzzy ? But not so much so that the rough shape of galaxy is still visible ?