Point and shoot ship, easy to pick up and fly with, sturdy and tanky and can support the kill combo of a Gatling and a Flak in front, making it very potent even for a newbie.
When I first started playing, just like most people, I had no idea what the different weapons were good for, so when I joined up on a Pyramidion with an other captain, I just looked around his ship, noted the Gatling and the Flak, pretty much tested out what they were doing myself and understood the basic concept.
Next day I tell a friend of mine to equip these on his ship, he's not the best captain, being as new as I was, yet we still managed to rack up kills like nothing. It's just the ship is the easiest to get used to and probably the most forgiving for extremely agressive players.
Still, that doesn't make it much better than any other ship, it's just easy to learn, but probably as hard to master as other ships. It will keep being popular for new players as long as Gat/Flak is the meta.
Personaly I avoid it like the plauge, I find it the least interesting ship out of them all.
Also who mentioned the term 'Metamidion'? Made me laugh so hard x3