I once had an idea for a pilum-centric fleet. A Hyperion as my flagship. 4 Pirate Falcons with 4 sabots for a bit of stopping power and disabling ships to make them vulnerable to the pilums, and 2 tactical lasers to give them a little damage-dealing ability and encourage the AI to space itself from enemy ships. 4 Condors with Thunders for PD and the two fighter-related skills (8 is the max number of wings before you start losing out on their bonuses), and of course pilums, for an effective 8 pilums. All 9 officers on the Falcons/Condors.
The bulk of the fleet is of course comprised of Vigilances, 21 of them, which brings the fleet's total DP up to 220 leaving 20 for non-combat ships. The Vigilances obviously have pilums bringing the total effective pilum count up to 50, and graviton beams which are mostly for influencing the AI's behavior, same as the tac lasers on the Falcons.
The idea is to have the entire fleet camp in a corner while the Hyperion scouts to establish line of sight with the enemy. As soon as we have line of sight, the fleet begins cranking out pilums. Unless the enemy closes the distance quickly they will fill the entire map with pilums and the enemy will be overwhelmed.
There are obviously some matchups where this gimmick won't work. For example, a large tanky ship with lots of PD turrets would probably be able to wade through the pilum cloud and shred through the Vigilances, assuming the Falcons can't overload it with sabots. The minelayers that Star Fortresses are equipped with could also hard-counter this fleet. If the minelayer's range extends to the corner of the map then this fleet would be completely useless against a Star Fortress. I'm honestly not sure about the range on the minelayers.
Frankly, any station aside from the crappy ones used by Pirates and LP would probably hard-counter this fleet.
And yes I do realize that this fleet isn't optimal. It's just a fun little idea I've had that I haven't bothered to test yet.
As for Brawlers, I don't really use them. I have used the Luddic Path Brawler a few times and those can be pretty nasty. Give them 2 assault cannons and they can punch far above their weight, but obviously the built-in safety overrides hullmod makes them a bad choice for lengthier battles. It's very nice for early game battles against soft targets like merchant caravans though.