Start Stellaris in the early days of space travel, when FTL is merely theoretical and a practical drive system has yet to be concieved, never mind researched and retrofitted. All empires except fallen start with no FTL, only one of three theories and a slower than light drive for colony and science ships. Practical FTL drives must be researched and retrofitted before other ships can leave their starting systems. Theory techs and first drive techs are quite rare.

Exploiting your home system is much more important than in the vanilla game. I recommend the Colonizeable Home System mod so that you can colonize all the worlds in your home system. My co-dev @ined77 prefers The Belt for asteroid colonization a la The Expanse. Colonize Unlimted, Colonization & Terraforming Overhaul or AlphaMod will also expand colonizability, among many other things. One of them is probably necessary to fully enjoy pre-FTL gameplay. Colonize Unlimited is included as part of More Technologies, but be aware that extra techs will delay your access to FTL noticeably.

The All FTL variant makes all drives researchable, with a strong AI preference for its initial choice. The original baseline mod has become an addon that keeps vanilla's FTL approach, where your initial choice of FTL governs your whole game. If you want to play with hyperlanes only, you'll need to run this variant.