The hegemon is actually a quite spectacular combat ship. It's large but it turns exceptionally quickly. It has a great deal of armor and a number of guns. When I equip mine I generally employ 2-4 mining lasers in the front and mine in cockpit mode. After that it's all 2.0s.
When I pirate people in, say, my l'Ane or GMG miner I'm confidant that they wont fight. Which is a relief because a mining ship could take my l'Ane apart. Generally they're too busy screaming STOP or trying to run to bother aiming themselves at a docking base, going into turret mode and throwing a wall of pain my way while burning for safety.
The Hegemon can throw a real monster of a pain wave.
First to utilize that mining vessel as a pirating vessel. Shortly after we wiped out gunboats traders and other mining ships everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
Trust me I have thought about putting gunboat power plant- weapons on the ship. But really only for an SRP-SR ship like Mon'stars Necrosis.