I'm not really familiar with Eclipse, as I only found it yesterday, and I thought of using it as a sort of a guideline to what classes/races are more powerful than others. Races's ECLs are often wonky, and classes have no such classification.
Okay, that makes sense. It took me a long time to understand Eclipse (mostly because I only looked at it very casually for quite a while), and I had to ask the co-author a lot of questions before I really got the hang of it. (What finally did it for me was looking at an example Eclipse character's list of powers and - point-for-point - referencing them in the rulebook so that I could understand what was being purchased and what it did.)
Racial ECL's are wonky normally, because they represent an absolute gradation of how much a race's powers are "worth" when that worth changes over time as characters accumulate levels. For example, having a +8 bonus to Strength can be overwhelming at level 3. On the other hand, it's not a big deal at level 20, when most characters that want/need a high Strength will have it somehow.
Eclipse largely solves that problem by making it possible to build on racial abilities via the points you get from class levels. Humans, for example, get Fast Learner, specialized for one-half cost/only grants a bonus to skills (costing 3 Character Points) - this is what grants humans a bonus skill point at each level. But a character can spend 3 more Character Points from, say, their 48 CPs they get at 1st level, and change that to "specialized for double effect/only grants a bonus to skills." Now the character has spent 6 character points on a "racial" ability, and is receiving 2 skill points at each level.
Being able to build on abilities - whether from race or class - is what makes their levels count across the wide spectrum of power from levels 1 to 20.
Unless there are better ideas? I seem to recall a Class Construction Engine and some such and some sort of a races classification? Might have been Pathfinder?
There's a note in the back of Eclipse about doing quick conversions of NPCs - simply give them 6 CPs per level for them to buy additional powers with, and don't change anything else about them.
If you want to ease into Eclipse, you might want to try that for your PCs. Just use the races and classes as written, but give them 6 Character Points at each level to buy things with. Of course, it's better not to give them unrestricted access to everything in the book - since that'd let them conceivably build any kind of character imaginable, limited only by how many points they can spend, but if you rule out the abilities you're uncertain of, and work with them in developing their characters, you should get some fairly interesting results.