Like I said I have one PC that doesn't ever seem to have a problem connecting to nodes but I haven't really looked into why.

I get the connected peers from the wallet "Help > Debug > Console" and type "getpeerinfo". If nodes are in IP6 I convert it to IP4 here: https://isc.sans.org/tools/ipv6.html and add it to the aptcoin.conf or type "addnode 175.43.121.56 add" in the Console.