Think what kind of armament a 12 million mt superfreighter can carry if, inside its hull and outside of a few cargo bays, it is really a warship.  A United Federation of Planets Zeus-class battleship only displaced 10Mmt. Certainly, there is a lot of tonnage dedicated to making this ship look and behave like a merchantman both to visual scans and on sensors. It handles like any big ship does at sublight speed, but with military grade drives and inertial compensators, a superfreighter-sized Q-ship is easily capable of pounding it out with a Federation battlecruiser of 7Mmt. The real advantage of a battlecruiser in such an encounter is that it is more maneuverable and faster to accelerate because of her lesser tonnage.

INDIGO Fleet has encountered two Q-ships to date.  The first was DSF Special Delivery, which was destroyed by USS Hood in self-defense in the Tabilin system.  The second was DSF Apocalypse, which severely crippled USS Prometheus in battle and subsequently enabled the Dalriadan Alliance to claim Burrakis, the source of bursite (see below).