You bet! Standard RTS rules apply - build up a really strong economy as fast as possible, only deploying the few ships you need to stop the Red Marauder speeding up. On hard mode, the ship speeds up if you haven't landed a hit against it for 16 seconds, so you need to balance building up your earning speed with occasionally getting a few hits in. Once you're earning around 30 gems a second, you can constantly deploy big ships.