The formula has been radically changed to increase the numbers of people in Jail and provide more of a challenge to busting.
The chance of succeeding a bust is based on many different factors, and it'll certainly become a skill knowing who you can bust and when.
- The time the target is in Jail (The more time, the harder they'll be to bust)
- The level of the target (The higher the level, the harder they'll be to bust)
- How many busts you've done recently (More busts, more recently, will make it harder)
There are also things which make busting easier.
- The total amount of busts you've made will allow you to bust people more often
- If your level is high, you'll be more likely to be successful.
- The three law education courses will still provide bonuses.
- The faction special 'Pertinent' will increase busting skill by up to 50%.
The most noticeable change is the difficulty increase when you've successfully busted others very recently. This means you won't be able to bust a lot of people every day. You'll have to pace yourself and choose who you bust wisely.
Another big change is that busting no longer costs Energy, but instead Nerve. Busting costs 5 nerve for each attempt, even if your bust fails.
For failing a bust and being sent to jail, like before you'll receive double the amount of jail time your target had. However the cap has been increased to 24 hours. We'll be playing with these settings over the next couple of weeks, so please expect it to change.
The reward has also changed from gaining a percent of your current crime experience to a static amount. How much you receive is based on how difficult the bust was for you. For example, busting a level 1 from jail who's only in there for 5 minutes will provide a very small amount, while busting a level 25 who's in jail for 6 hours, just after you've busted two other people, will give a much larger amount.
This will be a work in progress, and a bit of trial and error will be involved. We'll be working hard and monitoring the logs and user feedback carefully in order to correctly tune busting over the next couple of weeks. We certainly don't want to kill busting completely, but I think everyone agrees something needed to change.
UPDATE - I wanted to clarity on the crime experience reward from busting. Previously you gained a very small percent of your original crime experience. This meant that people with lots of crime EXP received a large gain, and people with a small amount of crime EXP received a negligible gain. The busting reward has been changed to be more in-line with crimes. To gain crime experience, you're probably better off doing crimes.
Thanks.