The thing most players do is try to race for the end, which makes sense -- you are being constantly pursued! Counterintuitively, you want to go as slowly as pos

The thing most players do is try to race for the end, which makes sense -- you are being constantly pursued! Counterintuitively, you want to go as slowly as possible to maximize the amount of rewards you receive. The more planets you visit in a system, the more rewards you get, and the stronger you are when you hit the mothership. That was a key misunderstanding I had that let me make significant progress once I figured it out. That... and liberal use of the spacebar to pause.