cruisers can equip cannons except for DHCs IIRC. To address the original question, I fly a defiant refit and I use the APO to escape tractors and as a second evasive maneuvers. I'm sure my build isn't as finely tuned as some of the others posted here, but I survive and I dish out the damage and I have fun. One of my alts…
uhm, what would you call the century from 0 AD to 100 AD, the zeroth century? ordinals are one based, not zero based, that's all. If you call 0 to 100 the first century, then 2000 to 2100 is called the twenty first century :)