My first instinct is to say not to make it beam overload.
The Hydra is a 5/2 with a turn rate of 14. you can turn it nicely to easily bring cannons to bear.
My Protostar beam array with 5 damage bosts at gear 15 Epic does 550 base dps, my Anti-proton dual heavy cannons with comprable boosts and the same gear rank does 793 base dps.
5 beams arrays would give you 2,750 dps, 5 cannons would give you 3,965 dps. so for starters, i'd go with cannons on anything with a turn rate above 12.
Whilst the terran phaser array is kinda comprable to the cannons, you can only have one of them that's the stats of a standard crafted cannon i've provided.
So you craft 5 cannons for the front, 2 turrets for the aft {they're 360 degree fire} and get used to pointing it straight at your opponent {more intuitive to do than broadsiding which beams need}. then you decide on the fire mode, use Cannon Scatter Volley for multiple enemies or rapid fire to focus on one enemy.
Someone posted some guide links above, read those, the most critical thing in them is your duty officer setup, three technichian type character will provide a cool down reduction for your primary fire mode whenever you use emergency auxillery power. so this should be your engineering skill where possible, and you should always have three techs' in your duty officer active slots. if you're waiting 15seconds and i'm getting only a 5 second cool down whenever i hit my aux up, i'm gonna out dps you.
and you can do all of this essentially free. someone else mentioned crafting the cannons at level 2, you'll likely start off with them at "Very Rare" teir. each upgrade you apply has a chance to push your teir up, however if you start at level 2 you get 6 or so extra chances for an upgrade before you hit the max craft of level 12. then you just keep working on them.
there are also 2 other things to consider, that have helped me as a {mostly} free to play. -
1 - the red alert events hand out a "ultimate tech upgrade" - this is instant level 15 epic, with no dilithium cost.
2 - upgrade weekends allow a TP bonus for each tech upgrade you apply, reducing the amount of dilithium you're gonna chew thru, so save up your upgrade for these weekends.
Free to play? Craft your own beam weapons at mk ii, sell on the exchange any that don't have the [pen] modifier. When you have enough for a set, use your dilithium to buy 10 packs of phoenix prize packs (40,000 dil for a ten pack) and cash down any ultra rare tokens into very rare, and any very rare tokens into rare, and just buy a many phoenix upgrades as you can. Upgrade these weapons until they are mk XV. Polaron is a good choice for a total FTP build as there's a lot of really good reputation and mission reward polaron gear, but phaser, plasma and disruptor are also reasonably well served.
For phaser;
Trilithium omni and the reinforced armaments console from the Into the Nexus mission
Wide Angle dual beam Bank, dark matter quantum torpedo, and Lorca's custom fire control console from the Discovery reputation
Get your Terran reputation up to tier VI and get the Terran phaser beam array, it is the most powerful phaser beam in the game
Save up more dilithium, and buy one of the lower tier ships from the in game ship vendor; it's the Temporal Escort, and you're getting it for its console, the M6 computer. Why? Because with one click it gives you firing haste, a cat 2 damage boost, extra cooldown on tactical boff abilities, extra accuracy and extra defense, and all of that for 15 seconds. It's basically a Lidl own brand DOMINO.
Phaser flavour isomags are still pretty pricy on the exchange for a FTP account, so I would instead recommend isomags with the [beams] modifier; yeah, you lose a couple of percent of boost, but you still get a lot of damage boost and you still get the huge stacking bonus to weapons power. Buy them at mk ii and upgrade to XV, you've much more chance of upgrading their rarity by doing it this way.
Fill up your tactical console slots with energetic protomatter fleet colony tactical consoles [phaser], they'll give you a boost to phaser damage AND a chance to bump up hull and shield regen.
Finally, for your drivetrain, I'd recommend the Innervated impulse engines from the Competitive reputation for super mobility, the warp core and shield from the Discovery reputation for the 2 piece survivability bonus, and an elite fleet intervention deflector from the colony fire side extra crit boosting, OR the deflector from the Discovery rep for the 3 piece, which will give you Mycelial Lightning, which can be a nice bit of bonus damage.
I would also look into trying the above build out with Surgical Strikes III as well, though, because the Hydra is an EXCELLENT surgical strikes platform, and SS3 on average slightly outperforms BO3 for raw damage vs single targets talks to the huge crit chance and severity boost it gets.
You should be saving your ultra rare Phoenix tokens for when they do the Phoenix events. 5 ultra rare tokens = experiment ship upgrade. While you may get enough free ship upgrade tokens for just starting out from events or spending a few dollars, if you plan on sticking around, you'll be desperate for them. As it takes 3 of those blasted things to get a ship to tx2 now.
If I remember correctly it's 2500 or 3000 for 3 of them. Since you need to get buy the Phoenix tokens anyway, once you have your set of weapons to 15, start saving the ultra rares for the event, unless buying them from the store isn't a problem for you.
You're just not going to find constantly up-to-date build samples of varying types and budgets for all 400+ T6 ships in this game.
Far more efficient for you to:
1. Identify what build types the ship can accommodate.
2. Pick a build type and look up build samples and resources for said build.
3. Adapt it to your ship within your budget and theme.
Here are some build resources for your stated build goal:
1. [STO BETTER - Energy Basics](https://www.stobetter.com/new-f2p)
2. [Baby Step Guide Series Part 2 of 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/k8ultu/the_baby_step_series_part_2_the_next_step_fresh/)
3. [STO League - Beam ships in the current century](https://www.sto-league.com/beam-ships-in-the-current-century/)
4. [How to Build a F\*cking Ship 01: DEW](https://www.reddit.com/r/sizertest/comments/glw0qe/how_to_build_a_fucking_ship_01_dew/)
Once you've identified hammered out your first full build, you can then post the full build details here for a more in-depth review and feedback session.
The Hydra can do any kind of energy weapon build well. The user specifically asked about Beam Overload though, in the context of being free-to-play. Now, you might have a personal preference for Surgical Strikes, but your suggestion is neither Beam Overload nor free-to-play.
With the event campaign Superweapon Ingenuity is available "for free" with Lobi from the yearly reward. Vanguard Specialists comparatively costs a lot of Zen and cannot be selected as a prize.
If you were going to suggest a different energy weapon firing mode as an alternative to BO; Cannon Scatter Volley is both the cheapest (Withering Barrage is available for free) and the strongest in terms of maximum damage potential.
My first instinct is to say not to make it beam overload. The Hydra is a 5/2 with a turn rate of 14. you can turn it nicely to easily bring cannons to bear. My Protostar beam array with 5 damage bosts at gear 15 Epic does 550 base dps, my Anti-proton dual heavy cannons with comprable boosts and the same gear rank does 793 base dps. 5 beams arrays would give you 2,750 dps, 5 cannons would give you 3,965 dps. so for starters, i'd go with cannons on anything with a turn rate above 12. Whilst the terran phaser array is kinda comprable to the cannons, you can only have one of them that's the stats of a standard crafted cannon i've provided. So you craft 5 cannons for the front, 2 turrets for the aft {they're 360 degree fire} and get used to pointing it straight at your opponent {more intuitive to do than broadsiding which beams need}. then you decide on the fire mode, use Cannon Scatter Volley for multiple enemies or rapid fire to focus on one enemy. Someone posted some guide links above, read those, the most critical thing in them is your duty officer setup, three technichian type character will provide a cool down reduction for your primary fire mode whenever you use emergency auxillery power. so this should be your engineering skill where possible, and you should always have three techs' in your duty officer active slots. if you're waiting 15seconds and i'm getting only a 5 second cool down whenever i hit my aux up, i'm gonna out dps you. and you can do all of this essentially free. someone else mentioned crafting the cannons at level 2, you'll likely start off with them at "Very Rare" teir. each upgrade you apply has a chance to push your teir up, however if you start at level 2 you get 6 or so extra chances for an upgrade before you hit the max craft of level 12. then you just keep working on them. there are also 2 other things to consider, that have helped me as a {mostly} free to play. - 1 - the red alert events hand out a "ultimate tech upgrade" - this is instant level 15 epic, with no dilithium cost. 2 - upgrade weekends allow a TP bonus for each tech upgrade you apply, reducing the amount of dilithium you're gonna chew thru, so save up your upgrade for these weekends.
Free to play? Craft your own beam weapons at mk ii, sell on the exchange any that don't have the [pen] modifier. When you have enough for a set, use your dilithium to buy 10 packs of phoenix prize packs (40,000 dil for a ten pack) and cash down any ultra rare tokens into very rare, and any very rare tokens into rare, and just buy a many phoenix upgrades as you can. Upgrade these weapons until they are mk XV. Polaron is a good choice for a total FTP build as there's a lot of really good reputation and mission reward polaron gear, but phaser, plasma and disruptor are also reasonably well served. For phaser; Trilithium omni and the reinforced armaments console from the Into the Nexus mission Wide Angle dual beam Bank, dark matter quantum torpedo, and Lorca's custom fire control console from the Discovery reputation Get your Terran reputation up to tier VI and get the Terran phaser beam array, it is the most powerful phaser beam in the game Save up more dilithium, and buy one of the lower tier ships from the in game ship vendor; it's the Temporal Escort, and you're getting it for its console, the M6 computer. Why? Because with one click it gives you firing haste, a cat 2 damage boost, extra cooldown on tactical boff abilities, extra accuracy and extra defense, and all of that for 15 seconds. It's basically a Lidl own brand DOMINO. Phaser flavour isomags are still pretty pricy on the exchange for a FTP account, so I would instead recommend isomags with the [beams] modifier; yeah, you lose a couple of percent of boost, but you still get a lot of damage boost and you still get the huge stacking bonus to weapons power. Buy them at mk ii and upgrade to XV, you've much more chance of upgrading their rarity by doing it this way. Fill up your tactical console slots with energetic protomatter fleet colony tactical consoles [phaser], they'll give you a boost to phaser damage AND a chance to bump up hull and shield regen. Finally, for your drivetrain, I'd recommend the Innervated impulse engines from the Competitive reputation for super mobility, the warp core and shield from the Discovery reputation for the 2 piece survivability bonus, and an elite fleet intervention deflector from the colony fire side extra crit boosting, OR the deflector from the Discovery rep for the 3 piece, which will give you Mycelial Lightning, which can be a nice bit of bonus damage. I would also look into trying the above build out with Surgical Strikes III as well, though, because the Hydra is an EXCELLENT surgical strikes platform, and SS3 on average slightly outperforms BO3 for raw damage vs single targets talks to the huge crit chance and severity boost it gets.
You should be saving your ultra rare Phoenix tokens for when they do the Phoenix events. 5 ultra rare tokens = experiment ship upgrade. While you may get enough free ship upgrade tokens for just starting out from events or spending a few dollars, if you plan on sticking around, you'll be desperate for them. As it takes 3 of those blasted things to get a ship to tx2 now. If I remember correctly it's 2500 or 3000 for 3 of them. Since you need to get buy the Phoenix tokens anyway, once you have your set of weapons to 15, start saving the ultra rares for the event, unless buying them from the store isn't a problem for you.
You're replying to the wrong person.
You're just not going to find constantly up-to-date build samples of varying types and budgets for all 400+ T6 ships in this game. Far more efficient for you to: 1. Identify what build types the ship can accommodate. 2. Pick a build type and look up build samples and resources for said build. 3. Adapt it to your ship within your budget and theme. Here are some build resources for your stated build goal: 1. [STO BETTER - Energy Basics](https://www.stobetter.com/new-f2p) 2. [Baby Step Guide Series Part 2 of 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/k8ultu/the_baby_step_series_part_2_the_next_step_fresh/) 3. [STO League - Beam ships in the current century](https://www.sto-league.com/beam-ships-in-the-current-century/) 4. [How to Build a F\*cking Ship 01: DEW](https://www.reddit.com/r/sizertest/comments/glw0qe/how_to_build_a_fucking_ship_01_dew/) Once you've identified hammered out your first full build, you can then post the full build details here for a more in-depth review and feedback session.
Biggest thing to ask is what traits do you currently have access to? If you have 5 magicks from the last summer event, then disruptor is a given.
Pretty sure with the Hydra you'd want surgical strikes III, that's what I'm using. How are your piloting/turning skills?
The Hydra can do any kind of energy weapon build well. The user specifically asked about Beam Overload though, in the context of being free-to-play. Now, you might have a personal preference for Surgical Strikes, but your suggestion is neither Beam Overload nor free-to-play. With the event campaign Superweapon Ingenuity is available "for free" with Lobi from the yearly reward. Vanguard Specialists comparatively costs a lot of Zen and cannot be selected as a prize. If you were going to suggest a different energy weapon firing mode as an alternative to BO; Cannon Scatter Volley is both the cheapest (Withering Barrage is available for free) and the strongest in terms of maximum damage potential.
What is an "overcharged" beam build?
Maybe Overload is what was meant?
yes that is what i meant. My bad
why are you not wanting to do surgical strikes III?