I dont expect amazing defenses, but its going to ... cough... punch above its weight class.
As per all the medium class ships, whether the guns are really useful will be determined by maneuverability and especially rotation rates. I think they'll have to be lower than the vanguard, Cutty and Lancer. just how far lower is the key to whether those guns mean anything. Last I checked this was planned to be the highest firepower available to pilot ship in game. I doubt it can hit anything smaller than a Lancer though. What that means is the turrets are more important for defense, than the guns for offense, so you do NOT want to fly this alone. Great pirate ship. For exploration, probably the 400i will be much better.
In history, Corsairs were the small ships pirates sailed in the Barbary wars area, as well as their sailors, who loaded small fast ships with too many men and used boarding to steal ships full of trade goods and made white slaves from the crews. Loaded for boarding with max distortion this does just over 5k dps. That is not nearly enough to take down medium shields, so unless CIG wamnts the distortion mechanic to be useless for boarding, they need to fix it.