Stardock will be closed for the week starting on Monday, June 29th and we will be returning on Monday, July 6th. We will be monitoring support tickets and forums during this time but expect delays in responses during this time.
I know it's not what you were asking for, but if you do a little grinding up front you can make your ship pretty good at combat and then get RU from killing aliens, assuming you enjoy the combat. And of course you do get faster engines, more starbases and such eventually.
PLEASE! Three times now I have lost some kind of message or communication from the people on my ship because they hit me up SECONDS before I contacted a planet, which caused the message to be entirely lost. Love the game, but this is INTENSELY frustrating.