Upgrade seed

"The Forerunners were master shipbuilders, among other things. They were explorers as well, spreading across a galaxy of three million occupied worlds. It was not uncommon for them to find themselves in contact with other species and races with rudimentary ships such as yours. They utilized design seeds to build their own ships from local resources if necessary. But there were many occasions when resources could not support a design, so the Forerunners used whatever local vessels they could obtain and created an upgrade seed - hard light instructions, blueprints, if you will, which bonded to an existing structure, reinforcing the materials, molding them as needed, and upgrading components and systems."

— 343 Guilty Spark explains the upgrade seed to the crew of the Ace of Spades.

An upgrade seed was a type of design seed utilized by the Forerunners to upgrade vessels of other species to have Forerunner technology upgrades within the ship's original framework of operating functional capability.

Design and operation

Upgrade seeds were designed to be tailored to specific types of vessels from races other than the Forerunners. The upgrade seed would not change the outer appearance of the vessel. Instead, the upgrade seeds would only strengthen its existing materials by hard light bonding. Inside, quantum and hard light filaments would intertwine with the ship's existing systems, directed by smart upgrade code, to create a custom integration between Forerunner technology and the ship's current specifications and technologies. As a result, the upgrades were limited by the limitations of the ship's original design. While the designs could be applied in orbit, it was better to ground the ship and run on auxiliary power as the upgrade seed did its work.

While the upgrade seed could create an upgrade to the vessel's slipspace drive, it required a Forerunner slipspace flake like any Forerunner vessel did. The upgrade seed would then create a seamless intergration between the vessel's original FTL drive, Forerunner translight technology and the slipspace flake taking into account the materials available to work with and the size of the vessel. Other known upgrades that the seed was capable of granting included stealth technology, upgraded comms, weapons and navigation systems, all kept with the framework of its original operating functionality.

List of appearances

• Halo: Renegades (First appearance)