by Hannibal Rex
You're looking at it the wrong way, Jim.Exiles need materials, true enough. But they only need materials. Once you have those, your economy kicks off amazingly.
Materials are most abundant in ring 3, and many on those sectors are one planet only. For anyone else, holding on to those sectors is a permanent drain on their action pool. You don't take those sectors to draw even on materials with the other players, you use them to outpace them.
For the Exiles, it means you may have a few actions less in the first couple of turns, but once you have a materials income of 10+, you can build one or more orbitals each turn without skimping on your fleet. Don't start with orbitals; you want a dreadnought first.
You don't have starbases, but your orbitals still pin opposing ships while your dreadnoughts can move freely to defend where needed thanks to your Cloaking Device. And for your counter-offense, you send out your interceptors to raze undefended sectors.
I keep repeating myself in the various Exile threads we have by now (3? 4?), but I really think the Exiles only look weak on paper. I was doubtful myself at first.
Admittedly, I haven't played them that much, but when I used this strategy in our last game, it worked beautifully. One thing that really helps is Influencing a white planet sector to switch your population around.