There's not a best, kind of depends on the ship and fortunately there are a lot of viable options.
SRB will get you the most damage, slightly edging out OC, then rapid fire at 3rd and efficient at 4th when only looking at DPS.
Things to consider, with jitter you will need to stay pretty close to land shots making long range to increase drop off range largely pointless, and their piercing value of 1 makes them pretty much worthless on hulls, so no point going focused. OC increases PD draw and heat, which on something like a Chieftain isn't a big deal even running 3. SRB is even more heat, but no increase to PD draw, and a max range of 500 m (off memory, maybe 600?), with no drop off, so on a ship you can maintain that range with is a very good option and the one I go with most often. Efficient is still enough of a damage increase to make them hit harder than an unengineered Large beam, definitely a lot of damage out of a size 1, and of course reduces power, pd draw, and heat, making it a nice option for smaller PDs, and even with larger PD ships letting you keep more pips in ENG to stay on target with 1 pip in WEP while stripping shields. Rapid fire I've tried, and the best thing about it is the firing sound hits to the same beat as a certain part of the song One by Metallica (Darkness, imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror...), but can leave one wanting for a guitar solo that never follows. I guess I do have a lightweight one as well on a ship for the sole reason of trying to keep that ship crazy fast, but that's pretty niche.
Expirementals have several valid options, oversized or multi-servos if you just want to pump out as much damage as possible, phasing to get a little hull damage while stripping shields (overall not really worth it imo, as I usually snipe PP and don't care if the hull is at 95% when shields go down on target, but not useless), scramble spectrum or thermal shock to maybe give you an advantage when target ship loses a module or overheats (might do those when running 3 cytos on a ship), then flow control if your build is tight on power and light weight if you need to keep mass down on a speed build.
SRB will get you the most damage, slightly edging out OC, then rapid fire at 3rd and efficient at 4th when only looking at DPS.
Things to consider, with jitter you will need to stay pretty close to land shots making long range to increase drop off range largely pointless, and their piercing value of 1 makes them pretty much worthless on hulls, so no point going focused. OC increases PD draw and heat, which on something like a Chieftain isn't a big deal even running 3. SRB is even more heat, but no increase to PD draw, and a max range of 500 m (off memory, maybe 600?), with no drop off, so on a ship you can maintain that range with is a very good option and the one I go with most often. Efficient is still enough of a damage increase to make them hit harder than an unengineered Large beam, definitely a lot of damage out of a size 1, and of course reduces power, pd draw, and heat, making it a nice option for smaller PDs, and even with larger PD ships letting you keep more pips in ENG to stay on target with 1 pip in WEP while stripping shields. Rapid fire I've tried, and the best thing about it is the firing sound hits to the same beat as a certain part of the song One by Metallica (Darkness, imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror...), but can leave one wanting for a guitar solo that never follows. I guess I do have a lightweight one as well on a ship for the sole reason of trying to keep that ship crazy fast, but that's pretty niche.
Expirementals have several valid options, oversized or multi-servos if you just want to pump out as much damage as possible, phasing to get a little hull damage while stripping shields (overall not really worth it imo, as I usually snipe PP and don't care if the hull is at 95% when shields go down on target, but not useless), scramble spectrum or thermal shock to maybe give you an advantage when target ship loses a module or overheats (might do those when running 3 cytos on a ship), then flow control if your build is tight on power and light weight if you need to keep mass down on a speed build.
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I'm a long way from unlocking the Cytoscramblers but this reminds me that I've yet to see a weapon for which oversized doesn't beat multi-servos. EDSY could be wrong of course, but when I compare (e.g. for the Cyto...) I see that every stat that isn't identical is a win for oversized, with the sole exception of the fairly meaningless rate of fire.
This makes me think I'm missing the point of multi-servos in some way...?
I went for rapid fire and inertial impact and never laughed so much in my life lasers going everywhere but not towards the target.
Maybe synergy with rapid fire if you’re more concerned with applying per hit chance effects? I really don’t know.
I must admit I have tried it as well, very amusing.
If you're not limited by the distributor Overcharged can really crank up the firepower. If the distributor is a factor Efficient will help with that. I'd stay away from Long Range as Focussed gives much the same benefits without the negatives. Short Range Blaster will cut the range down to silly levels, 500m is on-foot range.
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What do you mean? Not seeing all that much difference between them, and some of what I see is better with LR...
Back when I originally engineered my Cytos LR removed the range drop off. At some point that aspect was removed from LR but Focussed gets the benefit so you're still hitting at high power at longer ranges.
Coriolis still shows the old profile where output is a flat line out to 2km but it actually starts at the same point as the others now.
Coriolis still shows the old profile where output is a flat line out to 2km but it actually starts at the same point as the others now.
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OK, but EDSY and Coriolis both currently agree that LR has a drop-off of 2 km but Focussed has the drop-off at 1.2 km.
Hence my feeling that LR is actually better, other than the very slight impact on mass and power consumption.
phasing is unaffected by falloff or hull hardness, so it can be extremely effective for a small hardpoint on cytoscramblers. One of the few weapons that can deal more damage to a target that has its shields up than down.
It maybe they decided to reverse the decision as it kind of rendered LR pretty useless.
If it is back to the old way then yes LR is pretty decent.
The only reason to pick Multi-Servos is if you're trying to detonate powerplants (chance on hit).
Same with Rapid Fire (on Cytos and standard burst lasers. It's better on the other weapon types).
The problem with that approach is that Cytoscramblers deal ridiculous amounts of shield damage. So unless your target is constantly using SCBs, they'll run out of shields before you deal significant hull damage via phasing. And then you're left with -10% damage on your cytos and no phasing to compensate. It just might be worth it against heavily-engineered SpecOps or in PvP, but I don't see how it would be for general PvE.
My preferred approach to Cytos is pairing them with a corrosive weapon to get them up to 21 armor piercing (22 for Focused), which is enough to deal respectable hull damage. And you always want corrosive anyway.
Engineering depends on preferred engagement range:
Long Range > Focused > Short Range G4 > Short range + Inertial Impact
Long Range is dubious because past 1.2km you'll start to miss due to the jitter built into Cytos anyway. But if your ship doesn't care about the power/mass requirements over Focused, then slightly more damage is indeed more damage...
If you know you'll be doing a lot of fighting in the 600-800m band, you can consider Overcharged and Efficient, but I'd argue that's too narrow to be worthwile.
Experimentals:
Inertial Impact is hilarious dps if within touching distance, hilarious fireworks otherwise.
Phasing, Scramble Spectrum and Thermal Shock all sound like interesting effects, but imho are not worth their dps loss.
The other effects won't make or break a build, pick whatever you think your ship needs the most.
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