You might also consider using colony ships with more colony modules-a late version of DA downsized the colony module from DL's 500M pop to 250M, and since growth is based on population, this means less growth, which causes your colonies to take more time before they break even.
Engines of course also cost more in DA/TA, and that might be one reason you're spending more than you're used to, particularly if you're rush buying your ships. Until you get a feel for it, keep your leases to a minimum, and don't outright rush buy things, either. One viable method is to use base hulls (tiny or small, with sufficient miniaturization) and a single colony module-it results in a much cheaper colony ship, compared to doing the same trick in DL.
Additionally, morale is a little harder in DA/TA than it is in DL, and in fact if you're playing a non-Terran/Minor Race tech tree in TA, the early game can be considerably tougher, morale-wise, although by late game you ought to have more than enough.
Since these are things involving the base code of the game, no mod would be able to cause a direct change, but presumably if you monkeyed around with morale and income (and potentially population growth) boosters enough you could achieve your desired result.
Hope that helps, but it's hard to offer much without you being more specific in the problems you're having.
