[Fredex]

Reaching the center just takes perseverance, get lots of health and energy packs and good health for your ship. Then its just a case of jumping from system to system, clicking the repair thing as often as you can.

After I managed to get to the center I took the system closest too it, fortified it heavily with the uber turret thing and city defences. Then cleared out the nearest systems just to reduce attack risk.

Since the rate of attack seems to be based on proximity its good to keep a sort of buffer zone around you, so destroy the cities rather than capturing. The easiest way is just to shift the temperature of the planet into T1 since that kills all the grox on it anyway. Admittedly I probably did spend too long doing this but I kind of enjoyed trying to survive in the ridiculous circumstances.

Turns out the circumstances weren't as ridiculous as I thought because the grox rarely attack your planets if you keep a buffer around them and the uber turret handles it anyway. After a while a few planets with other races had reached tribal stage, so I advanced them to civilization, then wiped out all but one colour to get them up to space quickly. Then you can use them to trade with to get lower prices and they will spread out in the space cleared making things safer.

In a few hours play most of the center is clear and the grox aren't much of a threat, probably the most fun I've had in space stage since the first half hour or so too.