From my M2E experience I can tell you that playing more aggressive crews speeds up the game quite a lot. During a regular week I try to stick to simple crews with models that I know quite well.
The first game in M3E took more like 5-6 hours (with 35SS), just because we had to look up the rules and cards quite a lot.
So what I plan to do to speed up the game:
- Of course know your models and the basic rules.
- Know the interaction and bubbles of your models/crew.
- From a gaming perspective: Have a plan for each model. Sounds trivial, but really helps to speed up activations.
- Don't be afraid to make tactical mistakes, it is not always possible to find the best solution in a limited time frame. But you will learn from your mistakes and get better with time. It's about having fun playing the game after all :)