What changed

Escalating bust durations

• First bust: 6-hour local lockdown (unchanged)
• Second bust: 12 hours
• Third bust: 24 hours
• Cap: 48 hours

Each bust at the same port is remembered. The escalation resets to zero once your heat at that port fully decays — staying clean gives you a fresh slate.

Slower heat decay

Heat now decays at 5 per hour (was 10). A single bust leaves heat 100, which takes 20 hours to fully clear. This means the post-bust consequences last long enough to matter for your trading decisions.

Post-bust trade penalty

• During bust: 10% worse prices (unchanged)
• After lockout clears, while heat > 0: 5% worse prices (new)
• Heat at zero: no penalty, clean slate

The Market now distinguishes “Lockdown” (busted, 10%) from “Under watch” (post-bust, 5%) in the crime status panel.

Faster heat accumulation

• Safe success: +12 heat (was +8)
• Risky success: +25 heat (was +15)
• Bust: heat set to 100 (was max(70, current+20))

Sustained crime at the same port now heats up faster, making greedy loops self-limiting sooner.

Steeper bust chance from heat

The heat contribution to bust chance increased from 0.3% to 0.5% per heat point. At heat 100, bust chance from heat alone is 50% (was 30%) before attempt size is factored in.

Stronger alignment recovery on bust

• Rob bust: +25 alignment toward zero (was +20)
• Steal bust: +20 alignment toward zero (was +15)

Getting caught now pulls you back toward neutral more aggressively, making repeated busts a net alignment loss.

What this means for play

The optimized sell-and-steal loop — selling cargo to a port, stealing it back, and repeating — is no longer an effectively unbounded AP-only economy. Low-volume opportunistic theft at the safe limit still carries only the baseline 2% bust chance at zero heat. But sustained looping now escalates: heat builds faster, busts lock you out longer, and a post-bust trade penalty persists until heat fully decays.

Staying clean at a port resets the escalation. If you’ve been busted, let the heat cool, and your bust count clears when heat reaches zero.

What’s next

Monitoring live crime and trade action data across both galaxies to validate the curve. Further tuning may follow based on observed player behavior.