I just won the game on Hard without cheats. Not easy. I based the early levels on OSquared's upgrades reposted 27 Apr 09 by ddrumdrummer69. Sold the fighter bay and upgraded the main gun with the initial points, then alternated Main Gun damage and various repair drone upgrades per OSquared. Later I bought one laser turret midships and one frag turret 4th hardpoint back from front, and upgraded these to max, mixed in with more upgrades for repair drones. After that I filled all the other hardpoints with rocket turrets, and then upgraded those once I had filled all the hardpoints. On the final screen, I sold off everything but the frag turret and used the points to max drone repair and add 4 fighter bays with 10 fighters and first step dam/ROF upgrades. Upgraded fighters and fighter HP as I could. There were a couple of places where it was necessary to re-run the level a few times in order to play with the weapons mix.