Thing is you have to damage your own ship to deal with weapons all the time. Moonshine should also be used against mines, which have even more push back, but you probably haven't had to deal with a good mine gunner in the game yet. Also, it's not "constant moonshine" because that's not how you use shine, you use it in bursts of what your engineers can handle. Hydrogen is often used to dodge mortars or other weapons, too. All heavy weapons should be a pain to deal with, it's just that the Minotaur is quite easy to shoot and newer player friendly right now, which I'm not sure is the best thing considering the only heavy weapons that are very easy to shoot are only at close range.
Going off Crafeksterty's comment, the reason pyra side guns were not used wasn't because they weren't necessary, it's because it opens up your entire broadside and makes your ship a much huger target, along with usually positioning your crew away from the balloon unless the main engineer is shooting. If anything, with the nerf to hull health, using the side guns should be even less of an option. The devs designed the pyra so that it would be a big target if it wasn't using it's front guns and being the "vanguard" ship. You can't be sneaky when you accelerate like a flying bowl of pudding. If I start playing the game a lot I probably just won't fly pyra anymore, because honestly it just sounds boring and stressful to fly now.