Free Housing

So this came up in another thread about going into negative balance, and opinions were mixed ...


What should happen when one spouse, who owns a property (usually a PI), goes totally inactive and the upkeep and staff costs put their account into the negative ? Should the other spouse get to continue living there for free indefinitely ? Or should a system stopper be instituted to prevent years and years of free rides ?
The instance that caught my attention was approximately 5 years. Keep in mind that upkeep of 352k a day is 128m per year. Obviously losing a partner sucks, but you always have the option of finding another. Most stay with an inactive spouse for the merits... ofc that's a conscious choice made for their own benefit.


My personal opinion is that it gives the remaining spouse an unfair advantage over other players and at the point where someone is inactive and millions in the negative, there should be an warning/option to be evicted or start paying the upkeep.

No poll, just share your feelings.

The spouse who doesn't own the PI won't have to pay the upkeep which over time leads to a great amount. The spouse can just leech of his/her spouse with no consequences.

I don't think+ it makes a huge difference tbf. 128m is virtually nothing to any active player.

The problem is you lead yourself into another scenario if you change it.

2 married people split the cost of the PI one quits and goes into negative. The other person now suffers, if the staff are auto-fired (less happy, no doctor and no pilot for airstrip).

You'd also have the problem at what point into the negative they would be evicted. If your partner went on holidays for 2 weeks and went into the negative, the partner would be expected to pay upkeep for that time he was away?


At the end of the day I see this as a very small issue and don't see the need to change it.

But the upkeep would take 4+ years to not get covered by the value of the property. Maybe once the negative exceeds the value of the house then the property should be auto-deleted. But it's such a long time it's a non-issue.

In the instance I was referring to, the owner went inactive for 2 years, came back to a negative balance of 200m+ and then went inactive again, over 1000 days ago. A total of 5+ years and what I assume to be a negative balance of 500 to 600m by now.
Why should anyone get to stay in a property that long with no one paying the upkeep ?

Maybe once staff aren't paid, the happy should revert to the base 2000 ?

Make it so when staff aren't paid for a week. They quit. Would be logical IMO.

I agree. It gives the spouse and unfair advantage. After a year or two of inactivity, the spouse should be given the option to buy the property at a discounted rate and if they don't want to the property it returns to the system. The property owner is returned 90% of the purchase price of the property minus the upkeep costs that have built up.

Yeah but if you went halves with someone to buy the PI that's slightly shit. Now you have virtually lost your money as you can't use the PI to fly or have the happy benefit.

well not having to have to buy one is 1b.

The numbers of people 'abusing' this bug are so low it's virtually not worth changing it. In all them years the amount he's down isn't even over the property value, so it's unfair to punish him for it. It's not cheating the system out of anything.


It'll take being inactive over 6 years before you go into negative what the 3700 PI is worth.

I dont understand the argument, of course it should be fixed

Damn right, it's dumb how it is. Wherever you live the local council is not going to say "oh, you owe 50 hundretymillion dollars in property rates/taxes, but what's that? your hubby has buggered off?... in that case we'll let you stay here..."

Dumb, no, Super Dumb. Make a suggestion.

I did http://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=threads&f=4&t=15929403&b=0&a=0

If you expect the partner to pay the fees then surely they should get ownership of the property? Surely by your own example if the 'hubby has buggered off' then ownership will go to the 'wife'.

OK bogie, I'll make you a proposal. If I just let this go, totally drop the subject and never speak of it again, you send me one million each and every day till the end of torn ... since its such a minute amount.


Who wouldn't sign up for 1m a day forever ?

>.> as someone who i guess is "benefiting" off this can i say that paying up keep means nothing to me, if forced to i rather go out and buy my own PI or i'd have my inactive log on to give me their PI, they'd remain in the negative.

i feel like this wouldn't just affect those who are inactive, those who have a little less money than planned then going into negative to have their spouse kicked and happy reset, it just sounds like a major annoyance vs something that would help in any way for draining money

Yeah, of course, they abandoned the game... and their property.

If they cry when they return then let them join the "I lost my faction and/or company because I went idle" support group.

i think if you made 1 billion over 3 years you wouldn't be looked to have made anything amazing, you'd make more from FHC BB.