Difficulty?

@VaylinArcher - thanks for the recommendation. Was (finally) able to beat the game on hard using only human/purchased weapons with a strategy similar to yours.

I made a few minor tweaks:
*1 repair drone, 1 shield drone instead of 2 repairs. This worked reallly well when my ships were loaded out with shield boosters.
*Swapped one projectile cannon for a teleport. Used it to both dance away from missile volley and also to act as a meat shield for badly damaged ships. In this way I never actually lost a support ship.
*PDW was exclusively maxed-out lasers. You run into the whole "all your lasers target the same missile" thing from time to time, but in general I found them to be absolutely devastating against enemy capital ships.

What's the next challenge?