I managed to effectively softlock my progress shortly after getting enemy ships showing up. I didn't have the titanium for the defense system yet, and you can't grab them. I started to permanently lose hooks to them as well, being unable to fire them. Eventually I lost all my hooks and by then I was a sitting duck. They'd shoot me and make me lose more titanium then I could get at that point as my only way of pulling in asteroids was with the graviton nexus skill.
If this were fixed, I'd love to come back and see more of it. But right now, it's incredibly frustrating to be faced with something that I literally have no means to get the solution for the problem.