Such a beautiful ship, inside and out.
I have been waiting for more detail to come out to comment, but I did want to share one concern I have with the C2. It is still my choice, but it is a concern.
The C2 is max 2 crew. There are no gun stations. The copilot has control of one of the two rear turrets (dorsal or ventral) at a time, and the other is disabled. There is no way to fire both aft turrets at once. This is not true of the M2, which has a crew of 3 and a third seat on the bridge. So the C2 not only has fewer guns, it can't use all the guns it has.
First analysis with Erkul taking this to account is, you don't need enough power for all 6 guns at once. Erkul doesn't yet have the C2, but you can just switch off 4 of the M2's 8 guns.
If you put all your guns and shields on the M2 on overdrive, you need a big, hot, easy to see industrial reactor to power everything. The military upgrade is not enough, unless you want to overclock the reactor, which is not a great idea. What with the C2?
This will concern what guns and shields you choose. My standard test is with FR-86 and Revanents, and when you do this, the C2 is just like the M2 and despite half the guns, still needs either an industrial reactor or the military reactor on overdrive.
So which would I choose, C2 or M2? I hate that you can't run both turrets at the same time. Personally, I think this is the thing advocates of the Herc should whine and complain about. That's just FUBAR to build a ship that can't run all its guns at once for lack of a control station. Very FUBAR, however it means you're only splitting your pay two ways. The copilot can choose the dorsal mount when wanting the larger fire arc and the ventral gun when attacking ground targets. But. . .but why would a cargo ship attack a ground target? Personally, I think they should have left the ventral guns off and added more cargo. People would still flock to this lovely ship. Maybe that's the thing to beg CIG for--take the ventral turret off the C2 and add more cargo.
Maybe. . .
Final note, like almost all large ships, this has S2 radar and sensors. When looking for escorts, it would be wise to consider the Polaris. Especially if you're flying several Hercs to a single location, cap class radar is great to have. For single Hercs, consider the Apollo for S3 radar.