Happy Friday! It's screenshot time. Take a look at a Borg Cube having a bad day.

The folks at Alltern8.com are running a contest where the winner will receive a Star Trek Online beta key. Check out the contest here.

VideoGamer.com and IncGamers are holding contests in which you can win Star Trek Online beta keys. Check out the contests here:

• VideoGamer.com
• IncGamers

The Intrepid class proved its worth as a long-range vessel during U.S.S. Voyager's time in the Delta Quadrant. Voyager successfully completed a 70,000 light year journey with no access to Starfleet supplies or facilities. Its success made the Intrepid class the gold standard for deep space explorer ships.

Inspired by Voyager, the design teams at Utopia Planitia set out to update the Intrepid class with the latest in Starfleet technology and design theory. The Discovery class, along with her sister ships Intrepid and Cochrane, is more than capable of long exploration missions without Starfleet support or assistance, but is equally equipped as a fleet support or solo patrol vessel.

The transcript from today's dev chat is now available. Give it a read here. Special thanks to forums user JudasJung for his transcription!

Link to forum post

Next Tuesday, September 22, at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time (we’re GMT -7 right now), we’ll be holding a developer’s chat in the official Star Trek Online IRC chat!

Rather than running with a general topic, we're going to use last week's Ask Cryptic as a jumping off point. Was anything unclear in our answer? Have any follow-up questions? Now's the time to ask us live!

The chat is scheduled to last 30 minutes. If you can’t make it due to time constraints, we’ll be posting a transcript of the chat on the forums.

If you’d like to join us, point your IRC program of choice toward #STO on coldfront.net, or click right here for a Java client, then type "/join #STO" in the input area. And if you can’t make it, just reply with your question in this post’s comment thread. We’ll be selecting questions from the thread to put to the developers.

You are asked to transport a neutral diplomat to a peace conference between two warring solar alliances; the Kresch and the J’Edan. The core conflict revolves around a fundamental religious difference and has cost billions of lives in the last 3 decades. Both worlds feel that the only way to cleanse a planet of the religion brought by their foes, is causing global tidal waves; created by massive tectonic shifts in the planets’ crusts. Each of these attacks need months of planning; as the material needed to attack a planet in such manner cannot be transported at warp speeds. Each of these “Tidal Convoys” is a fleet of five sub-warp ships; each hosting a crew of 800 who are undertaking these attacks knowing they will die. Both Kresch and J’Edan have invested all their technological advancements into colonizing planets and creating these tidal ships, so neither of these two alliances has defenses against these attacks.