Heat is the level of notice that the Forces of Justice have on your operation.
Overview[]
Heat is a measure of how suspicious the Forces of Justice are of you. Agents and tourists gain heat by seeing suspicious objects, such as Body Bags, Power Generators, Loot items, Research equipment, or by witnessing suspicious activities such as fighting and interrogation. This is indicated by a circular bar around their feet. Agents have a yellow bar with blue color when they arrive, tourist have only a yellow bar. If heat is gained the bar will turn partially red. Characters with a completely red circle around their feet will try to leave the island immediately.
If an agent or tourist leaves your island with heat, they will raise the heat rating for the world organization they belong to. The higher your heat for a single world organization, the more skilled agents that it will send – having high heat is an easy way of attracting high-level soldiers onto your island. The level of heat that your evil actions has currently generated can be viewed on the World Domination Screen.
While tourists just start to run around in panic, agents who have spotted something fishy might try to take photos as evidence, destroy objects, or steal them, depending on what they have seen. Military agents such as soldiers, saboteurs, and veterans become more aggressive if they witness heat sources and are more likely to start shooting and blowing things to pieces.
Heat is not generated if agents are killed, frozen and not discovered. Yet, as aforementioned, if agents see enough suspicious activities (e.g killing, fighting, interrogation, suspicious objects) and their circular bar turns completely red they will try to escape with the incriminating evidence. Agents can lose all heat they have gained by reaching a vegetable state through smarts reduction by social minions, traps, or henchmen.
The overall heat rating can be lowered by letting agents who haven’t gained any heat leave the island or by taking a break, as the heat slowly diminishes with time when no evil activities are performed.
There are actually two kinds of heat – one is generated by sending your agents out onto the world map to plot and steal, and diminishes over time. The other is generated by performing Acts of Infamy, and does not diminish over time – it can only be diminished by dealing with agents on your base. This is why it’s generally a bad idea to do too many Acts of Infamy at once; they’ll create a swarm of agents all up in your base.