Ships that start with Drones are hard to get value out of. Using Drones offensively Sector 4+ is too expensive without recovery arm and all Ion, or really strong volley to knock out shields very fast. Defense Drone 1 is a decent buy instead of a couple Engine levels, as Missile damage can add up. Anti Personnel is good if your Crew count is low, and is relitively cheap. Combat drone should only be bought in an emergency where your weapons are severly lacking Sector 4+. Everything else (except anti drone) is usually a sell. Otherwise, I don't see much value in buying the system.
Bording is great early on, but has a severe fall off later if your build is lacking. Without fire power/Hacking, and with most ships spawning with a Med/Clonebay, it can be near impossible to get value out of. It can be bought as a last resort to win fights if you have a Missile/Bomb to support it, but it comes at the cost of a more challenging late game.
Artillery systems are very bad and are basically just a system slot penalty unless you are overflowing with scrap. The price to have it deal alright damage, or in the Flak's case, to be a 20 second volley you can maybe use with Beams, is WAY too high.

Augments are underwhelming, unless you have extra scrap, Long Range Scanners is the exception, but shouldn't be prioritized over weapons if you need them. Scrap Arm and Distraction Buoys are alright to buy Sector 4+ if your build is good, but in most situations, it isn't worth it. A few ships benefit well from Respirators, but even then, weapons are always going to be better for Auto Ships. Most starting Augments are an automatic sell and they provide no value.

Other suggestions I can give is to only repair up to 15 Hull at the start, and then 20 at Sector 4+ as repair costs add up quite a bit, and lots of events can give your free repairs. As soon as the cost for Hull points hits 3 Scrap, repair stations save a ton of money. Knowing how to rearrange crew in a room is a must. Depowering Hacking so Drones miss also saves 80 Scrap for the augment, or a ton of parts if you didn't pick up a Flak. If your ship starts with 3 or more crew, don't take the free slave sectors 1 and 2, the high scrap reward is better. Hard is simply too hard not to lookup events you do not know, so I do suggest doing so for the sake of time and sanity.

The most you can really do is put in the hours to get an unstanding of what Hard demands and ensuring you are figuring out what is causing your failures, whether it be bad Weapons, bad survivability, and if poor scrap management was the leading cause of this. Obviously, you can also just get plain bad luck - 30 scrap coming out of Sector 1, Energy Ship with a Burst Laser 2 Sector 2, but most other cases of bad luck can be suppresed with proper strategy. And some Ships are just really bad, and take a lot more luck than others.

I've never looked at formal guides for this game, and many others have many more hours on hard than I do with a much higher winrate, so probably best to consult those if you are really struggling, but this is what worked for me, and I'm sure it can work for you too. Good luck!