[Loopy]

Did it once on hardboiled with other settings at normal, on my first 200% game now and I've avoided all problems up to year 11 where I have ~700k worth in currency and goods, 6 systems free, and nanitoids (most important thing in the game lol).

- Do Faeyan Merc. Tier B missile launcher is priceless, you have a slightly bigger hull, and since your home system is Faeyan you will have much better equipment than a Peleng syatem. Make up the cash difference between you and the Peleng Pirate by hitting the business center immediately and then doing the training runs. This should get you nearly 20k worth of cash on hand and in goods.

- Forget everything other than 2 systems. Just forget them. In my 2nd game I tried to defend 3, and it wasn't worth the effort when 2 systems is more than enough to power your trade (constant dominator attacks makes prices shift like crazy). After about 4 years the coalition can pretty much defend on their own but you should still be there if you want the bases to survive. Or fortify them yourself, I had some 50k worth of money lying around at 3 years and had nothing to spend it on, might as well make the science base invincible.

- Pray you get lucky with a good hull showing up. I did. Almost 300 space Rapid Housing II hull with +150 speed showed up during July at the science base for me. Score! After that constantly check all bases for any equipment that is small, decent, and adds +missile capacity (which is actually + damage per missile). I got a speed of almost 700, a +20 repair droid, and totalled +12 damage per missile fairly early on while leaving about 130 space for hauling stuff. All thanks to luck, but if you are surviving you are bound to get lucky sooner or later...

- Screw anything that isn't a missile launcher. The first weapon I used that wasn't one of my 2 starting missile launchers was the 3rd missile launcher I bought a few years into the game. At best you can go toe to toe with a single enemy using close range weapons but anything more and you are toast instantly. Missiles also tend to be space efficient which leaves a lot more room for trading, 20 space or less is easy to find and all 4 launchers I'm using at the moment take up only 58 space combined.

- Trade like mad. Money is your lifeblood. Every single time you land check the prices for trading, they can shift dramatically as dominators move in and out. Keep plenty of cash on hand to exploit them, eventually you want to be able to buy out a full 400+ luxuries instantly whenever they go on sale.

- Do all missions, including RTS ones. At the worst, you get a crappy micromodule you can trade for dominator nodes to push you closer to getting your first +30 missile launcher damage micromodule at the ranger base. As soon as you get that your offensive power triples, so get to it. If you practice a bit at it RTS most missions won't take more than about 10-15 mins.

- Use probes. Hope to god they find you nanitoids ASAP. I got them in a nearby dominator system.

- Bases will never respawn until you control the entire sector. Protect all of them you can, at a minimum you want to peruse their excellent equipment. I don't think non-keller black holes spawn until you control the entire sector either, which sucks because you can't find those juicy artifacts early on.

- One semi-exploit you can use is to fire at dominators at max range, immediately land on a planet on the rim of the system, then take off and fire again. Repeat. Dominators will fly at you one turn and away the next, getting stuck in a loop where you rain constant missiles on them. Saved a system for me once. Keep in mind that if you wait a turn on the planet and there is no other friendly ship in the system, the dominators take over and you lose.

- One much bigger exploit you can use is to simply kill Keller in hyperspace as soon as you see him. This is somewhat hard depending on how good you are at hyperspace, but as soon as I did it all dominator attacks ceased. I could literally hit end turn for 10 years and never have my home systems come under attack. Not sure if it was some kind of bug, but I reloaded on my second game and didn't kill Keller early because it felt a bit cheap.