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I've found 20 points to work fine in this AP. It avoids weird uneven/unfairness from some people rolling a lot better than others. The AP isn't a pushover so no need to use a low point amount; 20 points works well in PFS and it works well here.
It's a bit hard to give advice in general; are there specific questions you'd like advice on?
One general thing then: make sure to use the free Iron Gods Players Guide. It helps inform the players of good ideas for building characters, and the Campaign Traits are good for hooking PCs into the story from the start and maintaining it later on.
One hazard to be aware of, it is easy for the party to lose the thread of the AP. At the end of the Lords of Rust, the party is entirely likely to want to head off to Starfall. The link to Casandalee can be a little thin.
Be sure to prepare to put then back on track.
Also, lower the Hardness of the Collector Robots from 10 to 5. This will still leave it as a big problem, but it should be something the heroes can overcome.
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We used 25 point buy, because we were going to be only 3 players. Then we had a 4th player, and 25 point buy is indeed powerful. I'd do 20 point buy if you have a normal sized group.
I also use Hero Points, because Hero Points are a wonderful way to give players some player agency power ("I want to succeed at THIS diplomacy check, because it's important for my character") and a great way to avoid the boreness of failing a Save or Suck roll and then being bound to Suck for the whole combat
My own campaign was not in Golarion, but a post-apocaliptic world. Regular guns were simple weapons, and ranged from Battered guns (like Fallout 4 Pipe Guns) to higher tech ballistic weapons such as assault rifles. Laser Weapons were Androffan tech only. I also gave free feats to the guns themselves: Guns with a Scope had a free Bullseye Shot feat (spend a move to gain +4 to hit), guns with a stock (like rifles) had free Deadly Aim, guns with pistol grips had free Point Blank Master (do not provoke Attack of Opportunity for firing in close range). It made guns more prevalent in the early games, specially for the bad guys (a bunch of orcs with shotguns are scary), but in the long run only the gunslinger and spellslinger wizard (this one sparingly) used guns. Not adding Dex to damage make guns obsolete for non-specialist classes anyway. However, it gave the early levels a different feel, and made thigs interesting tactically, finding cover is way more important if the random orc can shot you with a 2 barrel sawed off shotgun. And early one, most characters used a gun, if only occasionaly, because touch attack and a free deadly aim was enough to make them the go-to ranged weapon, over a bow (which was my goal, as I wanted to play in a post-apocalyptic Fallout/Mad Max style world)
About the connections between book 2 and 3/4, the McGuffin, and the backstory, I also did some changes, in case you might use them as inspiration
I agree that the link to Casandalee is weak. I made that stronger by using my players background. One of my players had a missing (kidnapped) wife and son in his background, I used that to say that they were kidnapped and lobotomized by Marrow. I linked Marrow Lobotomy technic to the Thought Harvester in the Chocking Tower, and linked Marrow, the lobotomy, the Smoke Ghost there, Therace (the brain in a jar in Book 4) and Garthone (the alchemist tech league in book 5) with the backgrounds of PC. (the lobotomy of this PC wife, the gunslinger was part of Mockery's resistance group and in a mission to try to get info from Technic league lobotomy/mind control experiments, trying to find a cure for the Black Sovereign, and the 2 androids were linked to Cassandalee, and Khonir Baine and his alchemist nemesis. All those tied to Unity's grand plan, because Marrow, the Thought Harvester, Therace's research about mi-go brain jars, and Garthorne's own research of homunculi artificial life, were proxies from Ozmyn Zaidov controlled by Unity, trying to improve his garden of brain-jar-worshippers to collect faith).
The story itself has a weak connection between books 2 and 3, and somewhat weak between books 3 and 4, but you can use the players Backgrounds to find motivations to go to those places, and tie those seemignly random bad guys (Marrow, Furkas, Nargim Haruvex, Therace, Garthorne, Doc Hellbroth) into the whole story, making them villians of the main theme, instead of scripted random encounters.
I also renamed Hellion into Herald, and made him work for Unity, instead of a rebel. This allowed me to make a conversation between Unity and the PC in book 2 (through a monitor), where he told the PC that Dominion of the Black was going to destroy humanity because humans have emotions, emotions include fear, and the Dominion of the Black feeds on fear. The only "logical solution" was to remove emotions, and free will/independence, and Unite with him. It made Unity a creepier evil guy, because he might be right . It also made Unity a pretty scary, and alien, mind. I scripted a bunch of creepy short answers, like "Resistance is a useless endeavour. Unity is the only solution", "Emotion is a weakness", "Your Fear feeds the Enemy", "the only useful human trait, is Faith" whenever the PC tried to argue him or his methods. His voice sounded reasonable, but he was already sure about the certainity of his own reasoning ("my algorithm is correct. Unity is the only solution"). His inexorable approach to the problem made him very "machine-like" (I used several times some math examples, which reinforce the idea of the inexorability of his arguments. For example "my algorithm ponders that your race has only 5.67% chance to defeat the Dominion of the Black. If you Unite with me, that chance is 89%", or "some day you will die. That's not a prophecy, it's a mathematical certainity")
Later in the Silver Mountain, they had a deeper argument with the Iron God (through his avatar Hope), they had a veeeery long and deep conversation about good and evil, the randomn unfairness of the universe's chaos, the value of free will, and if that free will was worth the suffering, pain, and death associated with living in a flesh body, instead of joining Unity's virtual world where you would feel comfortable by design. We had like one hour of deep philosopical debate between the party and the mad AI, where the players tried to explain the AI that he was wrong. My players loved the AI as a villain, because was a villain with motivations, not just the random "I'm a demon and want to destroy the world because that's what demons do" type of BBEG.
One of them was even in doubt of his own possition, given the fact that the AI is right about emotions being a weakness against the Dominion of the Black, which is really the long-term greatest threat for humanity and the whole universe.
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One hazard to be aware of, it is easy for the party to lose the thread of the AP. At the end of the Lords of Rust, the party is entirely likely to want to head off to Starfall. The link to Casandalee can be a little thin.
Be sure to prepare to put then back on track.
Also, lower the Hardness of the Collector Robots from 10 to 5. This will still leave it as a big problem, but it should be something the heroes can overcome.
I'd just remind them that 1) Starfall is controlled by technic league, which mean that possession of technological items is illegal and androids have danger of being captured for dissecting 2) Technic League does things like emplying giants for patrols. Aka make its obvious its way too early for them to go agaisnt Technic League this early 3) emphasis that they would need Casandlee when they are going against a (quasi) god,