A Betrayal of Pride: Caught Between a Rock and Light-years of Nothing

So things haven’t developed as well as hoped. I am stuck! Basically I can’t get out of my starting area and I’m caught in the corner. Luckily my nearest player, pink, has proposed a tech treaty and agreed to let me have Rasalas and it’s little cluster. I however cannot reach them. And I am worried that light blue will swoop in and take them from me as he has been creeping towards me already. 

My empire is the purple and white dots in the south west corner.
I know, it is small.

So I have no choice. My economy is abandoned for research. I am desperate for additional hyperspace range! I needed it as soon as possible so I can begin to spread my empire. The problem is every upgrade to a system costs more than the last, so where the first point in economy might cost $12 the next will cost $24 and the one after that $36 and so on. If I don’t get more systems and therefore access to cheaper upgrades quickly I will get priced out of the game. It would have taken nine days to make a breakthrough if I had not invested in improving my research, now I have managed to get it down to just over two days. I am hoping by tomorrow it will be even lower. 

But I still have a problem. I still need to stop light blue getting those systems before I can. Light blue is in the middle of the galaxy and spreading fast. He also had a much higher industry rating meaning he is producing many more ships than I can even dream of every single hour. I want to avoid war with him, because he would crush me through attrition alone over time, patience is the best answer. Desperate and out of options I make a move I don’t normally like to in Neptune’s Pride, I ask for help. I contact pink and ask him to take the systems I want and gift them to me later. I hope he will agree, because if he doesn’t we will end up in a state of war as I have no way out of my corner and he is the only realistic target if I am stuck. However we have set up a tech agreement so there is a level of dialogue happening already. There is a chance he will agree.

If pink doesn't agree I am prepared to
hit him with everything I have.

Up north my other partner, orange is becoming the fastest growing empire of anyone, I might have just lucked into a prosperous alliance. Maybe.