When my original empire fell apart and I started a one-person empire years ago and spawned in the middle of Starborn Dominion territory, I just teched to TL2 and then flew for a while at the speed limit until I was in the middle of nowhere and nobody was anywhere near me, then settled there. That said, I eventually got bored with the hunt for higher TL resources when I wasn't actually doing anything meaningful with them, and tired of my freighters diving into suns (so I joined Tymas, and had much more fun there).
When I joined Tymas, my empire (which I left behind to slowly decay or be conquered) had colonies in 12 systems, TL30 cryozine, TL31 oil, TL31 vulcium, theoretical access to TL30 ioplasma (lava planet, so with harvesters), and TL32 Eludium, Lumenite, Minerals, Water (and thus Air and Hydrogen), Ore, and Crystals, so I could make good ships, technologically speaking, but I had no opponents anywhere nearby. Besides which, a one-person empire against anything with more people is likely to be outmatched regardless of technology, if they don't handicap themselves.
Frankly, you really don't need resources that good to make decent ships. Especially not troop transports, which is what you need to take planets. If you want warships, you mostly just need to be efficient. You need enough capacitors to be able to fire your weapons rapidly (there's a maximum rate), your ship should be heavily armored, and shielded well. Most people seemed to build a ginormous weapon, put just enough capacitors to fire it, and then wonder why, when they got into combat, they fired one shot and then got machine-gunned to death by the enemy ship before their capacitors had recharged enough to fire again.