Wolf 359 TFO speed?

I'm struggling to make heads or tails of the progression of the TFO. Are there actual events that progress it faster or is timegated for the most part?

Obviously the first bit is kill all nodes, then it "starts". And it ends when you kill the spheres, but how does the rest of it progress? Killing assimilators/saving ships doesn't seem to impact the speed?

I'm all for going all out when my actions directly impact the progression of the event, but another hard timegated tfo leaves me to afk.