What to do when the tiles near you are explored in next colony?

Most of the tiles in our sector are explored, until now looking for new planets near our main system was the main task that we invested our time. Now this is going to change and we are exploring our options.

The most attractive action is to build explorers II to find planets far away with opportunities to explore without too much civilizations already exploring. This will allow us keep exploring at a good rate and create a another location were we can keep growing if the main system is compromised with attacks from other civilizations.

Other option is to increase the number of my ships in our planetary system, this will discourage new attacks and will allow us to farm from abandoned planets and other actions that well keep us busy.