You can get a medusa at the station, as well as an apogee, for sure: some other high tech ships can be purchased randomly (Such as the aurora or odyssey)
By camping around the station when a large hegemony defense fleet is there, often times attacking TT fleets will survive with only a couple capships and fighters, all often badly wounded, meaning that you can ambush them right after their battle, and take them on for a heightened change of forcing a surrender, or at least capturing them after a curbstomp battle.
Having a buttload of thunders and a bunch of useless ships simply taking up FP helps in forcing surrenders, because the massive fleet size will intimidate them into trying to escape, and the thunders are the fastest fighters in the game, allowing you to steal all the command points, and the useless otherwise-cannonfodder ships (like swarms of hounds, buffalo IIs, etc) probably doing things like sitting around, with the crews eating popcorn and watching the "battle" play out. Having some carriers near by will help too; those can be fielded in battle to provide any support lest the thunders take damage or use up their single missiles.