The Arcturus.
When I'm getting to the end-play I don't want to have to fly around like a fighter and pick at an enemy for 10 minutes before it's dead. I want something sturdy with decent amounts of firepower.
My preferred equipment would be something like this.

Arcturus
Field Impact Shields
Ceramic Hull Plating
Ramming Deflector
Neutron Beams or Proton Cannon
Dumbfire Launcher
Particle Laser
Maneuvering Booster
Heat Management
Broadside Charger

This outfit can reliably deal with large amounts of fighters, gunships and destroy big ships fast while not having to think too much about positioning because it's quite sturdy with the Field Impact Shields and Ramming Deflector.

Hull Class matters. Both the Sturville and Minotaur are only Medium Class. In prolonged battles with many ships where your shields go down from time to time the bleed through damage will cripple you after a while. It's certainly doable from my experience, tried both later in a game that got destroyed by a bug, but you'll have to dance around and practically play like you're a fighter with staying out of bigger ships firing arcs, lure them out one by one, lure away and get rid of all the fighters/gunships first, zigzag behind them to keep out of much of their firepower while firing broadsides between the zig and the zag and that sort of things. My patience and power fantasy cravings doesn't allow too much of that. :P

I've finished the game with a Sorcerer which I didn't like because it was a royal pain to not constantly fly into crap like space stations that was smaller than me...
The second ship I've finished it with was something like the Arcturus above. That was a fun one.
My almost third was in a Minotaur. Didn't like it as much because it's a bit too fragile for my play style. It's a dancer ship with a sting.
Now I'm up to MK4 in everything with a Scarab. Thought I should try that out but I'm starting to have miss givings. To manage finishing the game with that ships I think I'll need all MK6 gear since I avoid particle lasers in this play through. Sometimes they feel like cheating. ;)

has anyone finished with the radovich... how does it stack up, end game?

Lot of people over on Reddit seem to like it as an end game ship. Several claim it is the superior "cruiser/destroyer class" maid-of-all-work in the game, when properly equipped.

I like to do a lot of exploring/scrapping/mining, so I may try it on my next play through.

It sucks for handling the fighter and gunship megaswarms in late game when your ship and equipment is worth a gazillion credits. To handle those well you'll be needing a ship where most turrets can shoot "around the top" of your ship. The Arcturus is a good example. It's flat and have most of its turrets being able to shoot around and above the horizon/waterline.

Fighters and gunship swarms becomes the greatest danger by far when your ship worth is getting expensive. Say from MK4 or certainly MK5.

Otherwise it handles fine late game so if you don't mind having some problems with swarms of small ships then go for it. :)

Edit: The Rebel Galaxy forum over at Reddit suffer from the same miscalculation as other places do regarding how ships and equipment handles. Many just go to say overall MK4 in equipment, buy a expensive ship and say their ship and equipment works fine. What they don't realise is that after MK4 the equipment starts to be way more expensive than the ships so just the turrets costs many times more than the ship making difficulty take a real hike upwards.