Seed is a surprisingly viable starting program option

[jimwinsor]

OK, for fun I've been playing campaigns using the Randomize option at start, and a couple starts gave me Seed as my starting power program.

 

"Oh no, I'm doomed" I thought each time ... but each time Seed surprised me.

 

There is actually a lot of utility in getting (essentially) a guaranteed free program each turn, even if you have 0 power. And you're starting 10 power can actually be stretched a long way through judicious timing of your hacks. 

 

My last run got to Day 3 with Seed, and was only ended due to a movement blunder unrelated to Seed. I made sure to train up a Hacking expert whose job it was to squeeze the most juice out of every terminal, and I really never felt that hard up for power, relative to any other campaigns I ran. And it paired well with Rapier, which was one of my other programs.

 

I wouldn't call Seed great, or even good ... I would call it "decent." It certainly isn't as horrible I thought it would be when I first read the description.

[Shirsh]

Seed is the first and only program that convict me to wishing for "oracle" (and other ~5pwr things) at server farms, I like it.

+ With parasite and an instant breaker (like dagger) it allows to break two devices per turn with 0 energy ^_^

[HMV]

Seed + Hammer = Happy

[fernsauce]

Seed is pretty much the best power program imo. Even if you can only use a 2 power program each turn, you are *still* outperforming every single other power generation program (except, of course, for Central + Faust, but then you just have to use 3 power each turn for parity, *and* that loadout has to deal with daemons).

 

The key is generally to have programs you can use off-cooldown. I like Oracle + Parasite; Oracle ends up being very power efficient once cameras start spawning with 3+ firewalls and gives you lots of information about the layout of the level from the very first turn. When parasites start ramping up in power cost / there are no cameras left to steal with Oracle you can switch to using them with Seed to mitigate their increasing cost.

Ofc, I usually run Prism with Seed, because her augment makes it simply amazing and even without using Seed parasite can still earn its own power back. And this makes Oracle even *better*, because whenever you use it it refunds a point of power.

[Bigfoot]

Seed + Prism is my favourite combination by a long shot. Just sublime.

[jimwinsor]

Yeah I'm trying Seed + Prism right now, and wow. I'm hacking everything in sight on Day 1 and still have plenty of power in reserve. I started with Brimstone, then traded it in for Data Blast. All I can say is "wow!"

 

Let's see how Day 2 goes ...