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Network Siphon
The mark of a great agent is the ability to take your enemy's greatest strength and turn it into their weakness.
This augment is Archive Internationale's starting augment. It generates PWR equal to 2 times the alarm level each time the alarm level changes. This keeps going past alarm level 6, so it will generate 14 PWR 5 alarm ticks after alarm level 6, and so forth.
Strategy
If we assume one alarm level passes every 4 turns (because it makes the math easy, and it's sort of realistic, assuming an average of one mistake per alarm level), its power output per turn is:
| Alarm level | Total PWR gained | Total turns | Average efficiency |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 4 | 0.5 PWR/turn |
| 2 | 6 | 8 | 0.75 PWR/turn |
| 3 | 12 | 12 | 1 PWR/turn |
| 4 | 20 | 16 | 1.25 PWR/turn |
| 5 | 30 | 20 | 1.5 PWR/turn |
| 6 | 42 | 24 | 1.75 PWR/turn |
| 7* | 56 | 28 | 2 PWR/turn |
*not a real alarm level, but Network Siphon still works every 5 ticks after alarm level 6
As such, Network Siphon can be strong when you're able to get a lot of utility out of power spent when the alarm tracker is already very advanced, such as challenge campaigns where the alarm tracker moves at faster-than usual speed, or in an agency making heavy use of an econ chip (as it motivates staying deep into the alarm tracker, and creates a need for PWR since consoles aren't being used for it). However, Network Siphon suffers by comparison to other starting augments that generate PWR, such as Prism's Refraction Chamber, in most other agencies.