I used to be an avid cheater, but I'm trying to get out of the habit of it now -- but later on when I'm "rerolling" a new race persay, I'll look 'em up. ^^
You can use cheats to reroll your specialty in every sub-game.
I initially was going after planets with green/blue, whatever color it is spice since it sells really well on my homeworld, but I'll try to find some pink and purple. The only problem is that most of the galaxy near my HW is controlled by evil people. SUCK. XD
If you're having problems close to home, you can branch out and find a less hostile area, and then just focus your efforts there. Don't worry about losing planets - although I'm not sure if anything bad happens if you lose your home planet. You probably lose free regen, but that wont matter when you got bank.
The only problem I've REALLY been having with terraforming is I get the terrascore a fraction away from T1, and then it stops.. And I don't have the money to buy any more supplies, so it resets... And then when I finally got it, the game crashed and I didn't save! It's actually crashed several times now after I finally accomplished something. I swear, it's a conspiracy.
You know, you can save mid game...
Concentrate on getting badges for now; explore, interact with new species, etc - but stay away from the center of the galaxy for now, 'cause they'll destroy you. When you rank up enough, you'll be able to get the terraforming tools.
For now, you can make money buy buying spices low and selling high; you don't have to terraform to get them. Of course, you'll get them much faster if you control the planet, cause you can deck out its production.
[edit] Try to find an area where there are several planets with valuable spices - don't bother with red/yellow, but anything else should be worth picking up if it's cheap enough. In my game, the area of the galaxy where the legs begin to come together is pretty sparse as far as foreign species are concerned - though I'm not sure if that's by design.
