History VideoGame / HeatSignature

** Alternately, their missions can be very... unique. One special defector challenges involve boarding a ship without a pod; you must propel yourself to the airlock using guns, which is harder than it sounds.

* DestructiveTeleportation: Teleportation in the setting works this way, as Asli Sixty explains. The Glitch make the implications of it a major part of their culture.

** GunsAkimbo: A valid tactic, given that even Automatic weapons have a brief delay between shots. The pause and aim mechanics allow you to gun down an entire room of guards with ease.

* SequelHook: [[spoiler:Fiasco reveals she's been working for a fifth faction, who conquers the sector while the other factions are weakened from the war she started. She is ~70% confident that they won't kill everybody. The game ends with a view of the siege ship armada sweeping across the Drift, capturing station after station in rapid succession.]]

** Visitors teleport you to another location for two seconds. If you use another visitor charge at the last second, your first jump becomes permanent.
** Sidewinders can teleport you to any point within the area of effect, so long as there is a clear path. They can't go through doors, walls, windows, or the weird blue atmospheric retention fields that keep ships from depressurizing, but they can teleport you past the line-of-sight of guards and save time on a long open path if the start and end points are within 8-16 meters of each other.

* CoolOldLady: Sader Fiasco claims to be ''60'' or thereabouts, is [[TheChessmaster a master spy]], and [[MadeOfIron has been shot ten times]].

* CuttingTheKnot: Encouraged. While the example above of hijacking another ship and firing on the ship your target is in will work for assassination missions, capture missions and theft missions will result in an instant failure if your target is killed. In addition, since you can pause at any time, a solution to a difficult question may present itself if you take the time to think it through.

* DestinationDefenestration: A valid tactic for dealing with guards. The Concussion Hammer in particular can launch guards pretty impressive distances, even straight through/out windows.

-->''If god is dead, he was probably screwing with arconite. -Foundry''

** Visitors teleport you to another location for two seconds. If you reactivate it at the last second, your jump becomes permanent.
** Sidewinders can teleport you to any point within the area of effect, so long as there is a clear path. They can't go through doors, walls, windows, or the weird blue atmospheric retention fields that keep ships from depressurizing.

* PunchedAcrossTheRoom: Most melee weapons except the shortblade have decent knockback, but Offworld Security's Concussion Hammer takes first place here. It can send guards absolutely ''flying'', and is especially effective at [[DestinationDefenestration sending them through windows]].

** Bloodless: PacifistRun non-lethal style. You cannot kill ''anyone'' (except your assassination target, if applicable), but KOs are acceptable.

** Enigma: No ''living'' witnesses. If any guards see you, you ''must'' kill them to preserve your anonymity. Thankfully missions only generate with a single clause - no Bloodless Enigma missions.
** Silent: StealthRun - no alarms. This generally requires not being spotted at all, and not setting off any explosives.
** [[HarderThanHard Ghost]]: All of the above, except Silent. You cannot kill or knock out any guards, and you cannot be seen.

* SequelHook: [[spoiler:Fiasco reveals she's been working for a fifth faction, who conquers the sector while the other factions are weakened from the war she started. She claims they'll just relocate the civilians with compensation, but then the fleet accelerates at ramming speed...]]

* DungeonBypass: The Foundry Brick, an expensive type of breacher pod, can destroy a room/square of a ship by ramming it at high speed. This is a perfectly valid way to essentially bypass an entire, very large ship crewed by tons of badass guards and sentry guns, creating an opening right next to your objective. There are catches, however. You can ''only'' destroy a room by ramming it at high speed, making aiming rather difficult, especially if your target ship isn't sailing straight. On impact, your breacher pod is sent flying out of control, requiring you to fix it in a minigame sequence, which takes time. Combined with the fact that ramming a ship instantly sets off its alarm, for missions that have sufficiently short alarm response times, this tactic isn't possible. Lastly, if you're performing a capture mission, and your target happens to move on a patrol at just the wrong time, your ramming might end up killing your target, instantly failing the mission. Even for rescue and theft missions, the difficulty in precisely aiming your ram means that you might end up destroying/killing your target by accident.

** Guards will teleport into hazardous situations such as aforementioned subverted sentries, or into the melee range of a concussion hammer.

* NoPlotNoProblem: There is a brief plot at the beginning, and the backstory of the game is available if you talk to some [=NPCs=] (liberating the non-Foundry Faction Strongholds unlocks additional station personnel to talk to), but the focus is purely on the gameplay.

* TapOnTheHead: As is often the case in movies and games, hitting someone on the head really hard with a blunt weapon will just knock him out indefinitely, instead of giving him brain damage or fatal internal bleeding. Likewise, "concussive" guns instantly knock out their targets in a single shot...somehow. There are even [[ArtisticLicenseBiology armor-piercing concussive guns]], which makes no sense at all, but is pretty damn convenient for the TechnicalPacifist Off-Worlders. Concussive grenade launchers also exist, which knock out all unshielded targets in the blast radius.

* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts: All of the common items you can get from guards are worthless in terms of sale value--they literally sell for nothing. Buying them, however, costs money. Everything that isn't single-use (or equivalent) costs quite a bit of money, and you start with almost no money at all. Many missions feature guards with armor or shields, and you need specific gadgets or weapons to deal with them at all--and those cost money. Worse, since many such missions feature ''lots'' of guards with special protection, you need more than one such gadget. Earning money by doing a series of easier missions is certainly doable, but takes time. But a given character's ability to contribute towards liberations diminishes after doing enough missions, so by the time you get a bunch of quality gear, you have to retire the character and start anew. To make matters worse, one of the shops sells items that you haven't unlocked yet (only one such item, and it's chosen at random), but it's explicitly overpriced.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: If you somehow manage to lock a keycard on the other side of the door it unlocks, you can just teleport it to you.
** Also, armor-piercing weapons in Defector Missions may use regular ammunition instead of AP ammunition.
* ArchaicWeaponForAnAdvancedAge: The lethal melee weapons are the Longblade and Shortblade, essentially a longsword and shortsword respectively. They clearly have some social/cultural function within Sovereign society, as many of their ships have sparring areas (complete with faded bloodstains) and Sovereign guards that don't carry guns will carry Longblades instead. Also notable in that all characters appear to wield the Longblade similarly to the classical european 'Ox guard' style.
** ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks: You can throw anything in Heat Signature, but it works best with weapons. This also offsets the Shortblade's normally extremely short reach; you can just ''throw'' it at guards instead of rushing them.

** The Sovereign Coldfire is a Breacher pod that uses StealthInSpace to be immune to visual sensors, and it has an alternate thruster mode that makes it immune to "heat sensors". It looks cool, but avoiding visual sensors is quite easy anyway, and you can't shoot out windows from the outside either. Its alternate thruster mode doesn't seem to do anything beyond provide an slower thruster mode that looks cool. You can't even sell it for money.

** Subverters and Teleporters also serve as this for doors. Getting through a door normally requires getting a key - either from a guard, or a console. However, Subverters can unlock a single door (of any security level), and you can make Visitor teleports permanent if you expend two charges from it.
* DifficultButAwesome: This is encouraged by the game, which incentivizes quick-thinking and careful planning to pull off some insane stunts.
* DeflectorShields: Shielding units are available to both guards and the player. Guards may have emergency shields that only activate when alerted, or shields that are always active. You can use a manually-activated shield that lasts for a few seconds. In both cases, shields deflect all bullets and provide immunity to explosions.
* DestinationDefenestration: A valid tactic for dealing with guards. The Concussion Hammer, particularly, can launch guards pretty impressive distances, even straight through windows.
* DodgeTheBullet: If you're speedy enough, then you can dodge pistol bullets. Dodging buckshot is much harder, and can only be done at long ranges unless you have someone in front of you. Alternatively, you can use a teleporter to get out of the way just in the nick of time. Or, you could just trade places with the person who shot at you.

* ExplosiveDecompression: If a window is shot out, then everyone in the room gets sucked into space. This is fine for you, since you have your Pod and a limited supply of Oxygen, but everyone else faces a cruel death by suffocation. Considering most of the people you kill are bastards, you really shouldn't feel bad.
* FlavorText: Almost all items have some form of flavor text that either sheds a little light on the universe, or is just intended to be amusing.

* LaResistance: You're in it. Explicitly stated to be the best approach to dealing with Sovereign, the local MegaCorp: Sovereign can beat anyone in a standup fleet fight, no questions asked. They have the navy and they won't hesitate to use it. But they're just not equipped or trained to fight against guerrilla tactics.

* NoPlotNoProblem: There is a brief plot at the beginning, and the backstory of the game is available if you talk to some [=NPCs=], but the focus is purely on the gameplay.

-->'''Bartender:''' ''"Life isn't yours to take. When you kill someone, you override every choice they were ever going to make, all the good they could ever do. It's an irreversible loss of unknowable magnitude."''

-->'''Bartender:''' ''"That's fine, yes."''

-->'''Bartender:''' ''"That's what we keep asking cultures who kill. All force is wrong when you're wrong. Ours doesn't leave anyone dead."''

-->'''Bartender:''' ''"You know what?''

* ThereWasADoor: Breach grenades. When you need an exit from the middle of an enemy-infested starship in the next five seconds, look no further. When they detonate, breach grenades obliterate an ''entire'' room along with everything in it in a massive explosion.

* ArchaicWeaponForAnAdvancedAge: The lethal melee weapons are the Longblade and Shortblade, essentially a longsword and shortsword respectively. They clearly have some social/cultural function within Sovereign society, as many of their ships have sparring areas (complete with faded bloodstains) and Sovereign guards that don't carry guns will carry Longblades instead. Also notable in that all characters wield the Longblade in the classical european 'Ox guard' style.

* DungeonBypass: The Foundry Brick, an expensive type of breacher pod, can destroy a room/square of a ship by ramming it at high speed. This is a perfectly valid way to essentially bypass an entire, very large ship crewed by tons of badass guards and sentry guns, creating an opening right next to your objective. There are catches, however. You can ''only'' destroy a room by ramming it at high speed, making aiming rather difficult, especially if your target ship isn't sailing straight. On impact, your breacher pod is sent flying out of control, requiring you to fix it in a minigame sequence, which takes time. Combined with the fact that ramming a ship instantly sets off its alarm, for missions that have sufficiently short alarm response times, this tactic isn't possible. Lastly, if you're performing an assassination or capture mission, and your target happens to move on a patrol at just the wrong time, your ramming might end up killing your target, instantly failing the mission. Even for rescue and theft missions, the difficulty in precisely aiming your ram means that you might end up destroying/killing your target by accident.

----->''"There's a politic answer to this my CO would give to outsiders, about how seriously we take it, but no. It does. We are. I am.''

--------->''Pain ends. Death doesn't. That's the end of it for me, for us. I'm not here to make my culture palatable to you, so if you don't like it finish your drink and leave me the hell alone."''

* DodgeTheBullet: If you're speedy enough, then you can dodge pistol bullets. Dodging buckshot is much harder, and can only be done at long ranges unless you have someone in front of you. Alternatively, you can use a teleporter to get out of the way just in the nick of time.

*** In another case of CuttingTheKnot, escaping capture usually requires taking out the pilot. Alternatively, you can destroy all of the engines (via shooting out the fuel cans) - once you've done so, the ship will be drifting, unable to dock safely at its destination. This isn't too hard with most ships, although Glitcher ships have a very odd distributed design that makes this tactic much harder.

* JustATapOnTheHead: As is often the case in movies and games, hitting someone on the head really hard with a blunt weapon will just knock him out indefinitely, instead of giving him brain damage or fatal internal bleeding. Likewise, "concussive" guns instantly knock out their targets in a single shot...somehow. There are even [[ArtisticLicenseBiology armor-piercing concussive guns]], which makes no sense at all, but is pretty damn convenient for the TechnicalPacifist Off-Worlders. Concussive grenade launchers also exist, which knock out all unshielded targets in the blast radius.

* DodgeTheBullet: If you're speedy enough, then you can dodge pistol bullets. Dodging buckshot is much harder, and can only be done at long ranges unless you have someone in front of you.

* HarderThanHard: The game has five difficulties for missions: Easy, Medium, Hard, Audacious and "Mistake". Audacious missions are tough to complete, and pay well, but Mistake missions often give huge rewards if completed at the cost of it being almost a guarantee you'll die or fail. Special mention goes to missions involving large ships and short alarm response times, meaning that a single mistake in maintaining stealth will immediately result in a mission failure.

* HarderThanHard: The game has five difficulties for missions: Easy, Medium, Hard, Audacious and "Mistake". Audacious missions are tough to complete, and pay well, but Mistake missions often give huge rewards if completed at the cost of it being almost a guarantee you'll die or fail.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: A guard's shield can be hacked with a subverter device, causing any shots fired within it to bounce back off the inside of the shield with... predictable results. Sentry turrets can also be subverted, to percieve the player as friendly and guards as enemies.

* NGOSuperpower: ..also Sovereign. Paraphrasing the Sovereign bartender, Mirfak; Most governments get one planet. Sovereign has ''thirty five''. It has one of the biggest military forces in the galaxy. It's not a government, but it sure makes governments nervous.

* NoPlotNoProblem: There is a brief plot at the beginning, and the backstory of the game is available if you talk to some [=NPCs=], the focus is purely on the gameplay.

[[caption-width-right:350:''A game where you can go inside the spaceships.'']]

------>''"I will beat twenty people unconscious if it stops one death.''
------->''"I will break all of your fingers if I think one of them's going to pull a trigger.''
-------->''"I'll do worse, for less.''
--------->''"Pain ends. Death doesn't. That's the end of it for me, for us. I'm not here to make my culture palatable to you, so if you don't like it finish your drink and leave me the hell alone."''

* TechnicalPacifist: Offworld Security's schtick is they ''refuse'' to kill others, period, but are A-OK with torture. ''All'' of their weapons are nonlethal, even their sentry turrets.

-->

'''Heat Signature''' is a WideOpenSandbox Rougelike Space Infiltration game with [[StealthBasedGame Stealth elements ]] from the creators of ''{{VideoGame/Gunpoint}}''. The story follows a galactic war between five forces, each acting independently. Each one rules the space stations that dot the nebula with an iron fist, and the hardworking folk that live in them want freedom. That's where you come in: maybe your wife was kidnapped by TheEmpire and you want to get her back, or maybe your brother was murdered by the CorruptCops of TheFederation. Either way, you're armed with a Breacher Pod, a short-range non-organic-matter teleporter, and a huge arsenal of futuristic weapons and gadgets to raise the money to fund your potential SuicideMission to save the ones you love or get revenge for their demise.

The game was developed over the course of four years, and is available on {{UsefulNotes/Steam}}.

* StealthHiBye: The Visitor type teleporter works like this, allowing you to pop into a nearby location only to be yanked back in a second. This is often all the time you'll need to do whatever it is you want however, especially with the Pause mechanic.
* SuperReflexes: Represented by the Pause function, which allows you to pause the game and take an action, and the fact that time slows down when enemy units spot you.

The game was developed over the course of four years, and is available on UsefulNotes/Steam.