Note: This guide is not entirely up to date with the current patch - information about some of the new content is missing. It will be updated soon.

This guide is my attempt to accurately catalogue everything about Heat Signature.

If you're just looking for some quick hints on things you can do to improve your play, you should read the tips section.

If you want some further insight into how Heat Signature procedurally generates your game - as well as details on items, faction differences, guard AI, and so on - then you should read this entire guide. Heat Signature is a very predictable game and gives you (almost) perfect information, so with proper planning and an understanding of the game's basic systems, you will be unstoppable.

If you would like to point out a correction, submit an image, or leave a tip, please do so in the comments. Be friendly! I may have gotten something wrong, so be polite when pointing it out. All submissions will be credited in-line.

Thanks! Hope you enjoy reading this guide.

List of all to-do items for this guide. I already have my research done, it's just a matter of actually sitting down to write these sections.

• How do personal missions work?
  
• When and why should I retire?

I will also be tweaking the order of this guide, adding images, and so on, as time and interest permits. No videos unless absolutely necessary.

You already know the basics, and you don't really care about the details of procedural generation. Here's a list of quick tips you may be unaware of!

• Read every tooltip! This one is underlined because it's important. Heat Signature tells you almost everything in-game, and what it doesn't explicitly tell you can be inferred based on what it does tell you.
  
• Hold F to speed up time by 6x. Immensely useful when you're waiting for a guard to leave their group or when approaching a ship.
  
• Destroyed rooms act as impromptu airlocks. However, since there's no door between your pod and the ship, enemies can see you through the forcefield.
  
• You can attack random ships by just flying around. Ships will usually be specific to the faction whose space you are in, and will always have a time limit (since they are always heading to a station). Useful for gearing up from crates before attempting more difficult missions.
  
• Guard corpses can be used to prop open doors. Useful for using Sidewinders.
  
• Thrown objects cause noises when they hit walls. Useful for attracting guard attention without using guns. Be warned: guns will go off if thrown against a wall!
  
• Guards are not alerted by your unconscious body. This one is a little ridiculous, actually. If a guard spots you, as long as you knock yourself out before they shout intruder, the alarm won't sound. You can use this to your advantage to prevent an otherwise mission-ending alarm.
  
• Subverters will remove the lock from a key door. Subverter grenades are especially useful if multiple key doors are next to each other.
  
• You can permanently advance through sections by using Visitors twice or more in a row. The most recent start location will be your final return location, so with enough Visitors you can effectively teleport the entire length of a ship.
  
• All guards will die if spaced. If you can lure a guard to a room and then cause a breach (shoot out the window or blow the room), if won't matter if they are shielded or armored.
  
• You do not have to complete a mission to recharge items. As long as the ship doesn't have a time limit, you're welcome to go to a station and return.
  
• Keys of a higher number work on that number lock and below. Since key cloners usually have limited uses, you should seek ouy keys which are one or two higher than your current section.
  
• You can grab enemies the moment you harm them with a melee attack. Useful to keep them from flying into another guard's vision.
  
• You can capture a target without a non-lethal weapon as long as you can get them into your pod. This means Swappers, Glitch Traps, or blowing them out a window and catching them. (thanks Caleb!)
  
• Swapping with a pilot or destroying a ship's engines will also stop alarms. Useful for pacifist clause missions. (thanks f27!)

So you want a little more in-depth knowledge on how Heat Signature works. You've come to the right place! Starting with this section, I will be going into obsessive detail over how Heat Signature works. Buckle up!


Stations are where you start your Heat Signature journey, and you will find yourself back here after each mission. Every station has the same set of services available, with faction differences only changing the aesthetic and which lore NPC you can talk to for backstory about that faction.

• Personal Mission (Sader Fiasco): Every character you select has a personal mission. These missions require you spend a significant amount of money on the necessary intel, and are quite difficult. While you will always get an entire bar of liberation progress by completing a personal mission, there are also individual rewards such as huge amounts of money (Steal an item to pay off a debt) or a new character (Rescue my idiot friend). It's generally advisable to do personal missions as soon as you feel ready.
  
• Character Select (The Bar): Switch out characters. Any character you switch to the bar will stay there until you're ready to use them again. In the early game, swapping is very useful, as it allows you to build liberation progress to get good items before attempting a personal mission.
  
• Lore NPC (Varies per station): Learn more of the lore of a particular faction. Lore NPCs show up in stations of that faction. Not necessary, but fun to learn some backstory.
  
• Special Shop: An item shop that carries three things: melee weapons, crates (which give you random items on purchase), and a single "Overpriced" item which is not restricted to what you have unlocked but which costs several times as much.
  
• Item Shops: Self-explanatory. Any items you have unlocked through liberating stations will be available at these shops. See the Liberation section for more detail on how shop inventories are populated.
  
• Stash: Stores items for future use. Most useful for being the place where you dump all items you want to sell when running a mission. Character-specific.
  
• Mission Board: Get missions here. Drop-off point for mission items is also directly above the mission terminal.
  
• Liberations: Liberate new stations here. More detail on how liberations work in its section.
  
• Retire: Retire your character. If your character has completed a liberation or personal mission, you will be able to name one item in your inventory that you or your steam friends can find on future playthroughs. Retiring without performing some famous task will simply erase the character. Don't get too attached to a single character; you will eventually retire them once their fame is too great.
  
• Elevator: Return to your pod.

Returning to a friendly station will recharge all rechargeable items and repair your pod, should it be damaged.


When you're ready to go out amongst the stars, you will usually pick a mission to do. Missions come in many different varieties, but all the information you need besides the layout of the ship is contained in the briefing.

Mission difficulties and payouts are self-explanatory. Difficulty is an aggregate of many difficulty-influencing attributes such as ship size, guard loadouts, and modifiers, and the payouts are the mission's difficulty plus any clause bonuses.

Making the right mission choice is all about evaluating if you're ready for it, and the best at-a-glance way of doing so is through the objectives and clauses.

Missions can be one of five different objectives, most of which are similar.

• Assassinate: Kill a target. No proof necessary; the moment the target is dead, you're welcome to take off for home.
  
• Capture: Capture a target. To capture, move the target to your pod. This includes blowing them out airlocks or using glitch traps.
  
• Rescue: Rescue a target. Functionally the same as capture, except the target is already incapacitated.
  
• Steal: Steal an item. You will need to go to a chest and take the item back to a station.
  
• Hijack: Hijack a ship. You hijack ships by incapacitating the entire crew and then flying it back to a station.

These objectives can be modified special clauses. Clauses are more frequent on harder difficulties, but some - like Enigma - can be found even on easy contracts. Clauses increase the payout of a mission if they are adhered to, but decrease the payout if they are not followed.

• Silence: No alarms. Alarms are triggered if an enemy is alerted while a pilot is in their seat. Once the pilot is gone, you can no longer trigger an alarm.
  
• Enigma: No living witnesses. A living witness is somebody who has seen you while on alert and is still alive at mission end. You can, of course, kill any witnesses as necessary.
  
• Bloodless: No deaths except the target. Non-lethal is required, and special care must be taken to not breach a window or destroy a room.
  
• Pacifist: No attacking any guards except the target. This means you can't get keys from guards by attacking them, so you'll need a different way through doors, such as teleporters or key cloners.
  
• Ghost: No attacking any guards except the target, no living witnesses. Essentially, if you are seen or hurt anyone, you fail the clause. Extraordinarily difficult, but also gives the best pay.

Once you've decided you want to do a mission - say, a Bloodless Hijack - it's time to evaluate the various mission attributes.

As you do espionage across the galaxy, stations gradually come over to your side. These stations bring with them technology and resources others don't, which help fuel the war machine.


Whenever you complete a mission, you get liberation progress based on the payout and difficulty. Liberation progress is the little bar in blue at the bottom right, and every time you fill it to max you earn one liberation.

Using the Liberation console brings up a star chart, and from there you are allowed to select any station directly adjacent a friendly station to liberate. Whenever you liberate a station, your character can pass along an item when retiring, just like completing a personal mission. You also gain access to the station's defector mission, which is a stand-alone (doesn't affect the game) mission with a specific loadout.

There are four types of station: technology, economy, stronghold, and empty.

Liberating a technology station adds that technology to the shop list. Any items on the shop list can be found in the shops along the bottom of the station, and multiple items with different attributes can merge. For example, if you unlock Recharging and High Capacity Subverters, you can find either or both attributes on an item.

Liberating an economy station immediately gives a character 100g and adds 2g to the wallet of every newly-generated character. Useful for getting a head start on your current character - 100g is half the cost of a personal mission, after all - and making future starts less slow.

Liberating a stronghold is more difficult, and requires you complete an extremely difficult hijack mission. Liberating a stronghold sometimes gives new characters that faction's pod for free, and liberating all four strongholds (not every station, just the strongholds) is the victory condition.

Liberating an empty station gives you nothing but a defector mission. While defector missions are fun, you want to minimize the number of liberations spent on empty stations, at least until the endgame.

Planning out your liberation is important. Here are a few common choices for which technology to rush:

• Armor-Piercing Longblade: A great replacement for your basic weapon, and allows you to easily kill armored enemies.
  
• Angel Pod: Two benefits. First, you can press the use key (E) to tractor any floating people in range into the pod without any maneuvering. Second, if you are caught by an Angel pod after being thrown into space while lethally injured, you won't suffer a mortal injury, which reduces your death timer. Basically makes every lethal mission non-lethal.
  
• Crashbeam: Takes down electronics. Necessary for missions with full shields.
  
• Key Cloner: Steals a key without getting anywhere close to a guard. Allows you to challenge much more difficult ships than normally possible.

Shops sell you items you have unlocked. It's really that simple.

Once you have unlocked an item through liberation, some variation of it is guaranteed to be in one of the shops. By liberating the same item with different prefixes, you add to the potential pool of prefixes you can find on items in the shop. Items that only have a single prefix, such as Armor-Piercing Shortblades, are guaranteed to appear.

While shops are not guaranteed to have the right combination of multiple prefixes, they are guaranteed to have at least one of any item, even if it's a consumable. Thus, once you unlock at least one type of Crashbeam, you are guaranteed to find at least a consumable Crashbeam in the shop.

Setting up your shop inventories through strategic liberation gives future characters a strong head start, as you won't have to scavenge from chests to find good items. As you play, you'll gradually build up a stable of items that fits your playstyle, which will make challenging more difficult mission - where Heat Signature really shines - much more doable.

There is a lot to parse in mission details. After picking a mission and reading the objective and clause, you should read further so that you are never surprised by what Heat Signature throws at you.


The overall sum of how difficult the mission is. Difficulty determines your reward upon mission completion; the more difficult the mission, the better the payout and the more it contributes to liberation.

The harder the mission, the larger the ship. Larger ships have more sections, which means more keycard doors to open.

• Easy: Few guards, no time limits, no clauses. Training wheels missions.
  
• Medium: Slightly harder than Easy. Good for the first mission or two on a character to get some starter funds.
  
• Hard: Your bread and butter mission. Usually has at least one attribute which needs to be accounted for.
  
• Audacious: Difficult, but doable, missions. You will need to specifically prepare for these missions, but you still have a little leeway for making mistakes.
  
• Mistake: Lots of difficult mission attributes. Short time limits, lots of turrets, difficult guard loadouts, and tough clauses, all at once. Suicidally dangerous and usually requires specialized equipment to handle shielded or armored enemies.

There are four factions in Heat Signature. Each faction's ship archetype is shaped differently, prefers specific room layouts, and even trends towards different guard equipment.

• Glitcher: Has a scavenger motif. Shaped like bricks connected via walkways. Sections are separated by significant distances. Doesn't favor armor or shields.
  
• Sovereign: Has a futuristic war machine motif. Shaped like small squares connected at the corners. Often has large rooms with no cover. Exclusively lethal. Favors shields.
  
• Foundry: Has an industrial motif. Shaped like long rectangles. Lots of rows or columns of rooms, with little in the way of winding corridors. Rooms often have barriers you can use to block line of sight. Favors armor.
  
• Security: Has a pristine utopia motif. Shaped like stealth bombers or airplanes. Lots of winding corridors, few large rooms. Exclusively non-lethal. Favors shields.

When selecting a mission, there may be a time limit. While the three kinds of time limit are functionally different from each other, each one occupies the "time limit" attribute for a mission.

Many harder missions have strict time limits. To complete missions with restrictive time limits, you will need support items such as key-cloners, visitors, subverters, crashbeams, and so on. There's no specific right way to beat a mission as quickly as possible.

• No Alarm Response: No time limit, alarm or otherwise. This ship will never fly to a station, and you are welcome to attempt it as many times as you like, assuming you don't die.
  
• Alarm Time: How long until the ship reaches a station if the pilot sounds the alarm. Many harder missions have extremely short alarm times - less than twenty seconds sometimes - so having the equipment and experience to speedrun to the pilot is essential.
  
• Time Limit: How long until the ship reaches a station, but starts the moment you accept the mission instead of when the alarm goes off. An alarm triggered on a Time Limit mission will cut the limit in half. Taking out the pilot removes the time limit.

How many guards there are. Some ships have skeleton crews, which means they have three guards or less per group, while others have many guards, which means there are at least four guards per group.

Essential information when combined with guard loadouts. More guards means more time picking off enemies, more uses of support items, a higher chance of being spotted, and more drastic consequences when an alarm is sounded. Every difficult mission will have lots of guards.

If the ship has turrets. Self-explanatory. Turrets can be disabled (crashbeam, explosion, or manual) or turned against the guards (subverter).

These are attributes which don't really belong anywhere else, but which significantly change how you approach a mission.

• Note From Fiasco: This mission has a terminal that, when used, reduces the cost of your personal mission by 40. You don't have to complete the mission either; you can show up, interact with the terminal, fail the mission, and still get the cost reduction. Since Personal Missions are usually quite difficult, rewarding, and fun, you should seek out these missions if just for the intel.
  
• Warzone: The ship will come under attack during the mission. Suicidally dangerous; the game even tells you it's a terrible idea. However, there is an achievement for completing a hijack mission with the Warzone attribute, and the payout is always huge. Just don't accept capture or rescue missions in a warzone unless you are laden with teleporters; you'll never reach the target in time.
  
• Serious Guard Kit: Guards are explosive, armored, or have shields. Explosive guards require non-lethal weapons, armored guards require armor-piercing weapons, and shielded guards require crashbeams or subverters to disable the shields. While you can work around these limitations without the requisite items, it's a massive pain and generally ill-advised. So when you see this attribute, make sure to read the guard loadouts.

No matter the mission, guards have a very specific loadout. These loadouts affect the mission's difficulty, frequently require changing strategies, and differ per ship. Guards can have any amount of items, but will always carry at least a gun appropriate for their faction.

Every ship has two kinds of guards; guards, and bosses. Every guard group has a single boss, who usually has nicer gear and frequently carries the key.

All special items, with the exception of armor and explosives, are disable by subverters and crashbeams. Since guards on higher difficulties frequently carry good kits, having a decent crashbeam or subverter is important for attempting Audacious missions or above.

If your mission target is a person, they will be this type of guard. Absolutely check for what your target has before going on a mission, as you can complete missions with shielded/armored guards without the requisite items as long as the target isn't shielded/armored.

The weapon carried by this guard type. Usually, but not always, a common gun. Security guards never carry lethal weaponry, while guards of other factions can carry lethal or non-lethal.

If this guard type is the kind that can carry a key. Guard groups almost always have one keybearer; if they don't, the key is in a nearby terminal.

If you step within the red circle, the guard will start chasing you until you leave the red circle. Terrible for missions where you can't harm anybody, but immensely useful to lure guards through key doors or into traps otherwise.

If a guard is suspicious (sees you or hears a noise) they will teleport next to you. Much like Heat Sensor, it's generally not a detriment except on missions with pacifist clauses, as the guard will teleport to within melee range, making them an easy target.

When the guard sees something suspicious, they will raise their shield. Limits how long you have to react to a guard before they become invulnerable. Extremely irritating, especially when combined with Heat Sensor or Glitch Dash.

This guard explodes shortly after being killed, while knocking the guard out disables the explosive. The explosion will injure you and every unshielded person nearby, trigger alarms, blow out nearby windows, and even breach the hull. Naturally, non-lethal weapons are recommended. Extremely difficult to deal with when combined with Shields or Armor.

Guard is invulnerable to normal attacks. Only attacks with the armor-piercing property or explosions will hurt this guard. They can still be knocked around if the weapon has a hard enough impact.

To deal with these enemies, which are very common on higher difficulties, you should attempt to liberate the Armor-Piercing Longblades station first. This will make said longblades perpetually available at the special shop.

In addition, acid traps can be commonly bought in shops and will strip armor off the guards, letting you apply normal weaponry to them.

Guard is totally invulnerable to everything except the cold void of space. Can be deactivated with crash beams, crash traps, subverters, or crash/subverter grenades. Absolutely requires you bring along anti-shield items, but with proper alignment and strategic item use, you can often disable many shields with a single crashbeam or subverter grenade.

Crash traps are the cheapest way of dealing with shielded guards, as these are most often self-charging and readily accessible in the early game.

To master boarding and combat, you must understand the ships your board, the guards on those ships, and how to use pausable combat to your advantage.


Ships are the focus of every mission, and also fly around on ambient missions of their own. Equipment, number of guards and key doors, and so on depends on the faction that pilots the ship as well as the difficulty of the mission or the size of the ship.

Ships can be flown like the breaching pod, but they are different in two very important ways. First, ships do not have brakes, so you will need to get used to Newtonian thrust if you want to navigate with any precision. Second, ships can shoot missiles (default: RMB) which can blow apart the rooms and engines or other ships. This can be useful to kill an assassination target or a pilot without boarding the ship.

Ships are separated into sections, with each section blocked off by a key door. Each section always has at least one guard group, with group size dependent on mission difficulty. In missions with turrets, there will usually be at least one turret per section as well, usually in or nearby the guard room.


Guards are the primary obstacle you will face when pulled off elaborate heists and assassinations. Dumb as bricks but frequently possessing much better tech than you, figuring out how to deal with (or evade) guards is the majority of Heat Signature's challenge.

Guards spawn in groups, with one group per section. Each group is composed of any number of guards, and one boss. At periodic intervals, one of the guards in a section will wander away from the group to visit a terminal that doesn't require passing through any doors. This is usually your opportunity to strike; just remember to dispose of the body.

Guards have only a few very predictable AI states, and these states can be freely exploited to win. Even if you get spotted, your mission isn't over (unless you're doing a stealth mission, in which case sorry about the awful payout).

• Idle: Guard is hanging out with his pals, doing nothing at all.
  
• Job: Guard seeks out a random terminal within their section, stays there for a few seconds, then returns to the group.
  
• Panicked: Represented by a ?. Guard was teleported, attacked, or otherwise lost track of what they perceive to be a threat. Will rapidly do 180 turns on the spot until they see something suspicious or are harmed.
  
• Seen: Represented by a !. Guard saw you, and will investigate your last known location.
  
• Alert: Represented by "INTRUDER". Guard has seen you, and yelled out an alarm. If the pilot is active, this will trigger the alarm countdown; otherwise, it only alerts nearby enemies. Any guard which has seen you like this will be a "living witness".

If a guard knocks you out, they will grab your body and throw you out the nearest airlock. You can't do much while you are being carried, and when you are thrown out of an airlock, you will have limited time to remote control your pod to pick up your adrift body.

If you were knocked out by a lethal weapon, you will bleed, which reduces the amount of time until you die the next time you are knocked out by a lethal weapon. If you are knocked out by a non-lethal, there's no penalty; you must simply reach yourself before your oxygen runs out.


Heat Signature uses a pausable, real-time combat engine. Mastering Heat Signature's pausing is absolutely essential if you intend to get better. For missions with short time limits or punishing alarms, it's the only way to succeed, and is frequently necessary for missions with large guard groups.

While paused, you can do the following:

• Select Equipment: You can swap out which equipment is mapped to which mouse button here. Since items have separate cooldowns, juggling which items you are currently using is vital for combat. If you carry six guns, for example, you can line up six shots to instantly obliterate a guard group.
  
• Use Items: Use a mouse button to use the item you have bound to that button. Will only fire off once the button is released (except for automatic weapons, which always fire immediately), so you have plenty of time to line up a shot.
  
• Pick Up/Teleport Loose Items: Picks up nearby items. If the item is not nearby, teleports it to you with a 0.3s cooldown, from anywhere on the ship. Immensely useful, not in the least because you can kill a guard, immediately take their gun, and turn it against the other guards.
  
• Kill Guards:Unconscious guards that have seen you count as living witnesses, so if you want to maintain an enigma clause, you'll have to slit their throat.
  
• Remote Pilot Your Pod: If you've been knocked out and throw out the ship, or you just want to make a cool exit, you'll need to remote control your pod. Operates just like you're in the pilot seat, but your body is obviously still vulnerable. Only use when you are guaranteed to be safe.
  
• Miscellaneous: Pick up guards, open crates, detonate remote-controlled grenades, and so on. All self-explanatory.

Pausing also shows the statistics for your character (not on a mission) or your current mission (on a mission), and a nice little tip. Using the pause screen to see if you left any living witnesses is vital for enigma missions, so get used to reading those stats!

This is an appendix of every major ship object, how those objects function, and strategies for circumventing or exploiting them.

Your eternal foe and greatest savior. Doors control your movement through each ship, and block line of sight while closed.

Generally speaking, a ship is divided into a number of sections, with transition from one section to another blocked by a locked door. There are a number of ways to beat a locked door.

• Subverter: Subverters remove the lock on a single door. Very useful for panic situations, but not scalable without a self-charging subverter.
  
• Key Cloner: Key Cloners give you the key of a targeted enemy within range. Best way to get through doors without a fight, although you should be careful not to be seen.
  
• Swapper: Completely bypasses the door. This traps you on the other side, but since backtracking is not a necessity during infiltration, it's not much of a problem.
  
• Get the key from a guard: Some of the old-fashioned ultraviolence or sneaking; kill or disable the guard carrying the key, or pickpocket it. Simplest way to progress, but difficult on pacifist missions and can quickly lead to a mission failure. Only do this if you don't have another, better option.

Whether a door is open or closed also determines if a Sidewinder can teleport through it; closed doors block sidewinder paths. You can prop doors open by placing a body over the door, but make sure an enemy doesn't see the body, or they'll sound an alarm.

Used to unlock locked doors of the designated number or lower. Keys can be found in one of three places:

• On a guard: The most common place to find a key, and the most irritating. Hurt the guard to make them drop the key, sneak up behind them to pickpocket it, or clone it.
  
• In a terminal: Much easier than dealing with guards, but also much rarer. Simply use the terminal or a keycloner to get the key. Nothing special required!
  
• On the floor: Usually a key will be on the floor because it was dropped by a murdered guard, but very rarely you may see one on the floor anyway. Easiest acquisition method, as you simply pause the game and use the personal teleporter to grab it.

Keys are not strictly necessary to progress, especially if you have lots of teleporters, but they are the most reliable way.

These rooms explode after a short time (about one second) if the explosive barrel in the center of the room is hit by weapons fire. Can be used to your advantage to clear out armored or shielded enemies when your items are terrible. Will create open airlocks that your breacher pod can connect with, so great for making a getaway in a pinch.

Destroying all of these rooms in a ship will render it dead in the water, which means all alarms will be canceled.

Contains a random item. No restriction on what may spawn, unlike shop items. There does not appear to be a correlation between difficulty and what chests drop, but larger ships (higher difficulties) do have more chests, while smaller ships have very few or none at all.

Where the pilot sits. The objective for Hijack missions, as you must disable the pilot and the crew before steering back to base. Disabling a pilot should be your highest priority in every mission.

Harming the pilot and using the chair gives you a number of benefits:

• No alarms: No alarms will trigger when a guard yells intruder, and any existing alarms will be immediately canceled.
  
• No time limit: Nobody is able to steer the ship into a station, which removes any time limit.
  
• No heat sensors: Those heat sensors that sometimes detect your pod and hit it with a missile? Gone. Maneuver around an enemy ship with ease
  
• Pilot the ship: You can pilot the ship yourself. Of limited use, but for difficult assassinations you can use ship missiles to destroy an enemy ship without docking.

It is best to devise speedrun strategies for getting to a pilot as quickly as possible, as no alarms and no possibility of capture makes missions a cakewalk.


A turret turns to face each open corridor next to its room after a short time. While turning, they can't acquire or fire upon targets, and upon finishing the turn there is approximately a one second delay before the targeting laser turns back on.

Weaknesses

• Subverter: Subverters turn a turret so that it won't attack you and will attack enemies. This is shown by the targeting laser turning green. This is the best way to deal with a turret, but be warned; if an enemy sees a dead body caused by a turret they can still trigger the alarm.
  
• Crashbeam: Crashbeams completely disable a turret from a range and without making a sound. Not very necessary, as turning off turrets by hand is easy enough, but useful for pesky missions where turrets are surrounded by tons of enemies
  
• Manual Disable: Walk up to the turret and turn it off. Since turrets take a while to transitions between directions, this is a lot easier than you might expect. Just deal with all the guards before you try it.
  
• Explosives: Destroy the turret. Loud, crass, will almost certainly cause an alarm, but useful sometimes, especially if you are trying to lure enemies to you.

Appendix by YellowAfterlife

This is an appendix of every character attribute that a character can be generated with. Attributes are divided into three categories:

• Positive: Attributes which grant a positive effect, such as a combat buff. Reduces glory gained.
  
• Neutral: Attributes which grant alternate, but not positive, effects. No effect on glory.
  
• Negative: Attributes which grant negative effects, such as being unable to use shops. Increases glory gained.

You're 2x as likely to find good items in crates. -15% glory
Conveniently balances out the Blacklisted trait a bit, and seems to generate together with it often enough.

You take twice as long to bleed out. -10% glory
More space for terrible mistakes, essentially.

You drop a concussive grenade any time you're taken down. -9% glory
Good for saving you from enemies, but limited use on tougher missions and attracts attention.

You start with an embarrassing amount of money. -8% glory
The embarrassing amount can be anywhere between 200 and 500, which makes this one of the more desirable traits in combination with Dying.

Longblade recovery time is halved and Shortblade dash range is doubled. -8% glory
Great for melee play, which scales well to higher difficulty missions.

All concussive guns self-charge for you. -8% glory
Self-charging guns are pretty rare, and even rarer to find one that has other attributes of interest (such as being silenced). Perfect for non-lethal contracts.

You can glitch 50% further with teleporters. -25% glory
Not to be underestimated, this allows to skip over entire sections of ships with teleporters.

When you use a gadget's last charge, there's a 50% chance it won't be used up. -15% glory
Can trigger multiple times in a row and applies to rechargeable and self-charging teleporters.

All guns you fire are silenced. -5% glory
Silenced is not a rare weapon attribute, but being quiet is never bad.

You already have the intel you need for your personal mission.
You don't have to pay 200 to start your personal mission; you can get to the business immediately.

Your personal mission is actually not that hard.
Easier personal mission.

You're well equipped and ready to liberate your home station.
Free starting items.

Your mentor was a legend, and they've passed their favourite item on to you.
One (1) free item from one of your own or your friends' "living legend" characters.

You're restocked to 24 ammo and 12 armour-penetrating ammo each time you return to a station.
No glory change, as if quietly acknowledging that this is as mild of a trait as it gets.

You can't bring yourself to take any mission that pays less than $70, it's beneath you.
No glory bonus, so your early-game troubles with tough missions will remain completely unacknowledged.

Shots with firearms can go anywhere within 15 degrees of where you're aiming. +7% glory
Don't expect to hit anyone unless you are firing at them point blank or with a shotgun. Consider melee options.

You pass out for about 2 seconds whenever you teleport. +12% glory
Make sure you only teleport into safe positions; no teleporting into a group and instantly killing them all

You're not strong enough to use melee weapons. +15% glory
Unsilenced gunfire quickly summons guards and causes alarms, hence the large glory bonus

You're banned from all shops and you know full well why. +15% glory
You can only get gear from ships. Frequently paired with Lucky.

Each time you use a gadget there's a 50% chance it'll break. +30% glory
Less scary than it sounds as you can still use the on-floor "traps" just fine. Also, doesn't seem to apply to the last charge of non-rechargeable items?

Any lethal damage kills you, no chance to rescue yourself with your pod. +30% glory
That's right - if you get shot, you're dead for good. Same for fuel tank explosions, carelessly standing in a ship module as a missile hits it, and so on. Huge glory bonus!

You only have 10 minutes to live. +30% glory
The timer ticks while on the station or travelling towards the ship, but not while paused or picking a mission. The time limit makes it tricky to make any use of the glory bonus.

This is a comprehensive list of every non-weapon item in the game.

Swaps you with target guard. Guard will panick and spin in place continually until harmed or alerted.

Useful for:

• Skipping doors: Simply swap with a guard on the other side of a door. Just don't do it into a big guard group unless you're prepared for a fight.
  
• Isolating difficult guards: Swap with a guard who has a shield, armour, or explosive kit. Now you don't have to deal with them!
  
• Disabling pilots without harm: Swap with a pilot to remove them from the helm, which negates all time limits and ship-wide alarms (just like killing them would!).

Teleports you to target location, as long as there is a clear path (read: no closed doors) between you and the location. Distance traveled doesn't matter.

Useful for:

• Evasion: Sidewinding away if you get spotted at a distance is a great way to avoid alerting a guard. You can also sidewind during fights to dodge bullets.
  
• Sneaking: Combining a Key Cloner with a Sidewinder will let you sneak through ships by teleporting from spot to spot to steal enemy keys.
  
• Ambushes: Sidewinding into an enemy group and instantly obliterating all of them circumvents the "how do I approach a group" problem.

Teleports you to target location, then teleports you back to your starting location after a few seconds.

Useful for:

• Dangerous fights: If you are knocked out while visiting, the glitch will teleport you back to your starting location, even if you are being carried to an airlock.
  
• Quick traversal: Visitors have no target restrictions, so you can use them anywhere. By visiting multiple times in a row, you can effectively teleport up to your last start position.

Teleports any enemies that walk over the designated area to the set destination. Number of charges is the number of people who can be teleported.

Useful for:

• Killing guards: Pointing a glitch trap out of the ship will cause the target do die of suffocation in space.
  
• Isolating guards: Point a glitch trap to a separated room or a nook, and watch the teleported guards nervously spin there in panic. Even teleporting the guard back to their group will keep them in panic, which can be used to disable a patrol group entirely.
  
• Capturing targets: You can glitch trap capture targets into your pod, even if they are armored or shielded, which negates the need for weapons.

Disables anything electronic. Affects turrets and guard equipment.

Useful for:

• Turrets: Disable turrets at a range without turning them on guards (which may cause an alarm, if the guards see a body.
  
• Shields: Disable shields without the chance of the target shooting and killing themselves.
  
• Guard kits: Disable all guard kits except armor and explosives. Obviously most useful for shields, but also handy if you're trying to sneak past heat sensors and such.

Subverts anything electronic to corrupt its basic function. Affects turrets, guard equipment, and doors.

Useful for:

• Turrets: Turn turrets against their masters. Deeply satisfying, but causes alarms if guards see the bodies.
  
• Shields: Invert shields so that guards who shoot with their shield up will harm themselves instead.
  
• Doors: Disable key locks on doors. Extremely useful for speedruns.

Get a copy of a key without having to steal the original.

Useful for:

• Difficult ships: Some ship guards have really difficult equipment that you may not be able to handle. Key cloning allows you to skip all that!
  
• Speedruns: Combine key cloners and sidewinders to advance through a ship in less than five in-game seconds.

Move extremely fast and slow down your perception of time for a few seconds. Warning: as you come out of slipstream, your controls will be sluggish and you may keep moving in your current direction. Keep this in mind.

Useful for:

• Sneaking: While in slipstream enemies take forever to spot you and you move really fast; the two keys to a good sneak.
  
• Combat: Slipstream also reduces the cooldown of all your items, which allows you to be the ultra-fast ninja death machien you always dreamt of being.
  
• Exiting ships: if you are doing a rescue/steal mission, you don't even need a weapon to leave the ship - just run into a window while the time is slowed down (or shortly after it returns to normal), and you'll find yourself in space.

Invisible barrier that enemies can't see through. Is represented by a wide black V in front of your character.

Useful for:

• Sneaking: Slip past guard groups with ease.
  
• Stealing: Since you are completely invisible to guards as long as the shield is between you, you can use the stealth shield to pickpocket keys.
  
• Ambushes: Get up close and personal without guards seeing you, then get a-murdering.
  
• Rescue missions: While the "V" is not shown while you are carrying a rescue target, the effect still stands. Mind that you cannot do this with capture missions, as the guards will still notice the target's body for whatever reason.

A comprehensive list of all item attributes. Each attribute within the same category is mutually exclusive with other attributes of the same category, unless otherwise specified. Most attributes have associated prefixes, but some do not.

Color of the item's name, and general power level. Only items of Interesting rarity or above will sell for anything at a vendor.

• Interesting: All items are at least this rarity.
  
• Rare: Granted by Recharging attribute.
  
• Exceptional: Granted by the Self-Charging attribute.

The number of uses your item has. Upon running out of uses, you will either be temporarily unable to use the item (if it recharges) or it will disintegrate (if it doesn't recharge).

• No Attribute: 1 use.
  
• Medium Capacity: 3 uses.
  
• High-Capacity: 5 uses.

How your items recharge, if they do at all. Items that do not recharge disintegrate once all their charges are used.

• No Attribute: Item will disintegrate after it loses its last charge. Charge is retained between missions.
  
• Recharging/Restocking: Charge/ammo will restore to max capacity upon docking with a friendly station. Limited-use per mission, but never disintegrates.
  
• Self-Charging: Charge will gradually restore to max capacity over time, even on enemy ships.

Items only. Determines the maximum possible range of your item

• No Attribute: Base range. Generally speaking, about one room length.
  
• Long Range: 1.5x base range.
  
• Extreme Range: 2x base range.

This is a list of every weapon in the game, uniques excluded.

Guns shoot bullets. You should know that. Basic lethal and non-lethal guns can be found on nearly every guard.

Lethal guns usually require ammo, which can be scavenged from ships and missions. You can see your current ammo count below your inventory. Normal ammo is orange (left), armor-piercing ammo is greenish-blue (right).

• Gun/Rifle: Shoots a single bullet in the specified direction.
  
• Shotgun: Shoots a spread of bullets (about a 45° arc) in the specified direction.

Grenades, as one might expect, explode after a short duration. Grenades can be found either individually, or in the form of Grenade Launchers, which have a longer range and restock upon docking.

Grenades vary based on their damage and detonation types. Make sure you read your grenade's attributes before using it!

Damage types

• Explosive: Will kill any non-shielded enemy. Extremely loud and dangerous.
  
• Concussive: Will knock out enemies. Extremely loud, marginally less dangerous.
  
• Subverter: Will subvert all electronics within the area of effect. Totally silent, completely harmless (for you!)

Detonation types

• Impact: Detonates upon coming to a rest or touching any other game object.
  
• Proximity: Detonates upon an enemy entering its trigger radius. Essentially a mine.
  
• Remote: Can only be detonated from the pause menu, and all active grenades will detonate at the same time.

These weapons are all used exclusively in melee. Melee weapons are mostly silent, and have a fixed range and cooldown depending on their type. The only modifier a melee weapon can have is Armor-Piercing.

• Wrench: Knock out a target with a long-range, long-cooldown lunge.
  
• Longblade: Kill a target with a long-range, long-cooldown lunge.
  
• Shortblade: Kill a target with a short-range, short-cooldown lunge.
  
• Concussion Hammer: Knock out a target with a long-range, short-cooldown lunge. This attack causes the enemy to fly back almost an entire room's length, including out windows.

A comprehensive list of all weapon attributes. Each attribute within the same category is mutually exclusive with other attributes of the same category, unless otherwise specified. Most attributes have associated prefixes, but some do not.


These attributes apply to all weapons.

Rarity
Color of the item's name, and general power level. Only items of Interesting rarity or above will sell for anything at a vendor.

• Common: Guns, shotguns, and wrenches. Weapons of this rarity sell for nothing, and are freely abundant on any ship.
  
• Interesting: Granted by any attribute.
  
• Rare: Granted by Restocking and Quickfire attributes.
  
• Exceptional: Granted by Armor-Piercing attribute.
  
• Unique: These weapons are unique. They always generate the same way, and do special things.

Lethality
Whether you kill the target or not. A guard taken out by either method is permanently incapacitated.

• Lethal: Attacks kill the target. Fails bloodless clauses. Causes exploding guards to explode.
  
• Concussive: Attacks knock out the target. Unconscious guards count as "living witnesses" if they saw you.

Armour-Piercing
This weapon can directly injure armored opponents. Usually lethal, although there are some very rare armour-piercing non-lethal options.

Noise
How much noise your weapon makes. If you are heard, the alarm may sound.

• No Attribute: Can be heard from far away, approximately 2-3 room lengths.
  
• Quiet: Can be heard from one room length away.
  
• Silenced: Can be heard from one meter away (about quarter of a room's length)

These attributes only apply to ranged weapons such as guns and shotguns

Fire Speed
The speed at which a weapon can fire. The faster the speed, the better the weapon.

• No Attribute: Base firing speed, feels about 0.9s (not explicitly shown).
  
• Quickfire: Fast, semi-automatic. 0.3s firing speed.
  
• Automatic: Fires as long as you hold the trigger, feels about 0.1s (not explicitly shown).

These attributes only apply to melee weapons.

Swing Speed
Determines how fast you can swing, which limits your options in a fight. No prefix.

• Slow Recovery: 0.4s cooldown on a swing.
  
• Quick Recovery: Swings incredibly fast, feels about 0.1s (not explicitly shown).

Appendix by YellowAfterlife

An appendix of every difficult or easy-to-overlook achievement, along with tips on how to get each one.

Complete a practice mission
Just in case, that's the thing next to the mission selection pad.

Retire as a Living Legend
Complete your personal mission and see retirement menu at the north side of the station.

Board a ship without docking your pod
This is easiest done via the defector mission at your first station, which has you take a role of a character having to get onto a ship by propelling themselves with a shotgun alone/

Complete a Bloodless Clause
Remember, if anyone dies during your mission, it is officially your fault, so don't get people killed by other people, turrets, explosions, knocked out of windows...

Complete an Enigma Clause
A "living witness" is a guard that had the "alert meter" reach the maximum value (at which point they would normally attempt to shoot/kick you) or had seen your unconscious body being carried out the ship. Such guards are indicated via "Has seen you" in their mouseover text. Killing all of the guards that have seen you will renew the clause.

Complete a Silence Clause
As outlined above, killing, knocking out, swapping out, or hitting the pilot with a grenade or thrown item (to knock them off the seat) will prevent the ship from ringing an alarm. A pilot does not re-take the seat so you don't have to worry about them.

Complete a Pacifist Clause
As of you finishing the mission, no crew member must be dead or knocked out, be that of your fault or not.

Complete a Ghost Clause
A combination of Enigma, Silence, and Pacifist clauses. Sneak your way around the ship as you may. These missions pay the most out of all clauses so having a set of items for stealth/teleportation pays off long-term.

Complete a theft without being seen or harming anyone
Treat your Steal mission as a Ghost clause even if it isn't.

Dock at a friendly station while on emergency fuel
Emergency fuel is what happens after your pod gets shot down after flying too close to ship's headlights (provided that the ship has any weaponry).
Tip: You can pause during the pod repair minigame to avoid messing up.

Make it to a station after your pod has been destroyed
The easiest way to achieve this is as following:

• Knock out/kill everyone but the captain of the ship
  
• Start remote controlling your pod (while you remain on the ship)
  
• Fly the pod in front of ship's sensors to get it damaged, but don't repair it (or intentionally press the wrong button)
  
• Knock out/kill the captain and fly the ship to a friendly station

Catch a Rescue target in your pod while they're suffocating in space
Your Rescue target may end up in space for reasons including but not limited to:

• You leaving the ship through a broken window or airlock while carrying them
  
• Getting sucked out into space due to window being broken in the same room
  
• Unexpected deconstruction of their module of temporary residence (see: missiles)

Knock a Capture target through a window
Is also the easy way of capturing armored targets without having any equipment - get them in a room with a window (you can also briefly lure them or use a Swapper) and knock them against the window.
Extra note: If you are using a Concussion Hammer, Facebreaker, OR you have multiple wrenches to switch between quickly, you can hit the target multiple times to accelerate them towards a window from a greater distance; Use of Slipstream allows to drag targets over even greater distances.

Find a unique item
Aside from seasonal events introducing some semi-rare unique items, this one is pretty much pure luck - keep checking the crates on mission and random ships till the luck shines on you.

Find an item that belonged to a Steam friend's character
Same as above, with a note - if you have a character that can do hard/well rewarded missions, you can buy bulks of Mystery Crates to get through semi-rare items quicker.

Cause a guard with a subverted shield to shoot themselves
This is what happens if a guard with a subverted shield attempts to shoot you.

Acquire a keycard while Visiting
Teleport next to - preferably behind - a guard, pause the game, pick "Steal keycard"

Be rescued from your captor by the Visitor
Easiest done by teleporting in front of a guard that has already seen you and is eager to punch you in the face. Preferably, a guard wielding a non-lethal item, as not getting thrown into space would still cost you bleed time.

Deliver an assassination target alive
Treat your Assassination mission as a Capture mission.
Doing so will also not count the assassination towards your total kills.

Complete an Assassinate mission without entering the ship
As outlined earlier, take a peek into the ship to see where your target is (without stepping out of your pod), then leave and hijack an unrelated ship, and start pecking away at the target's ship by firing missiles at it. Make sure that the mission does not have a time limit / escape timer.

Cause a guard to shoot themselves by Swapping with them
Pause timely and make sure that you are in the range.

Knock yourself out with a wrench you threw
Throw a wrench into a wall you're next to, or teleport into the path of a wrench you threw.

Start a new galaxy
Pick "Change galaxy" on the pause menu and create a new save slot.

Delete a Galaxy
Delete a save slot (probably the same one you made for the above achievement).

Appendix by YellowAfterlife

If you would like to compete in leaderboards, you will need to raise your Glory tier to V first (by completing missions from preceding tiers), after which the game will bestow increasingly harder/higher-score missions upon you as your personal best increases.

You may reroll the missions by either walking back to the barstool, sitting down, and picking the same character, or by accepting a mission and cancelling it immediately.

You may reroll the characters by retiring all existing characters (so that you always get a selection of four) and reloading the same galaxy from the pause menu.

Past a certain point, your maximum achieveable glory score may be affected by your character's glory bonus. Since many might find the process of rerolling characters unexciting at best, I present you with a hand-picked selection of somewhat high-bonus ones:

• Sunshine Castle[www.dropbox.com]: +90%
  Traits: Blacklisted, Frail, Technophobe, Weak
  The absolute highest scoring plyable combination of traits... but at what price?
  
• Carina Coldstar[www.dropbox.com]: +87%
  Traits: Frail, Glitch Sickness, Technophobe, Weak
  This is the same set of traits that my primary "glory run" character has.
  Teleportation is a trouble, but you get to use shops.
  
• Jazz Nightly[www.dropbox.com]: +75%
  Traits: Frail, Technophobe, Weak, Heir
  This is the best worst character that I've rolled to date.
  A slightly lower bonus, but you get a self-charging Crash grenade launcher.
  
• todo: is it possible to get a +82% Frail+Technophobe+Weak+Shaky character? I don't think the game I've seen the game generate Weak+Shaky ever.

(download a character file and extract to your Characters folder in %APPDATA%/Heat_Signature (can paste into Explorer address bar) -> Galaxy <number> -> Characters)
(before you ask, all of these are in state as they were right after picking)