Solar Systems with lots of asteriods but no planets

[Suicide Junkie]

In order to make contact with a race, you must meet ship/planet to ship/planet.

In order to maintain contact, you must have a path from any one of your planets to any one of their planets.

If you've got zero maintenance, & are being hammered by intel, abandon all your planets & use starbase construction & ship capture to win. With out a planet, you can't maintain contact, and without contact, they can't do intel