Hm, part of upkeep could be based on some upgrades. You need supplies and booze for bar, for example, and the more customers have been served, the more supplies you will need tomorrow.
Another thing is area of the building, the more rooms and upgrades could have the building, the more land tax. It doesn't matter if they already built or not since it's about land, not property.
One more thing is income tax. I remember wm has this one, but I don't recall its value. Here we could also use tax evasion depending on connections, MC intelligence and who knows what else.
In slums and similar locations taxes could be replaced for "protection money" for local gangs, and if you have strong enough fighters, you may refuse to pay it (and feel the consequences).
In wm security is brothel's fame from the viewpoint of security. Theoretically, you need high security in good locations, but in slums, where thugs are your major customers, you probably need it low.
However, I'm not sure how to implement it. Maybe as a set of rules for guard when to interfere and when not to?
As for damage, the only thing I'd like to use it is punishment for spells and skills of mass destruction inside the building, so it might as well be part of BE.
Ok... so upkeep:
- I don't like property tax based on what you've built/upgraded. Property is yours and you do whatever you like with it, works like that everywhere (basically what you've said).
- We can also agree that any permits for bar/club/gardens are a part of their cost in order not to make the game more complicated than it has to be.
so... we're left with:
1) Upkeep that is derived from the price (lets say price/30 and payed on weekly basis).
2) Upkeep that comes with maintaining upgrades, like beer/food for club and bar based on amount of costumers, parttime gardener to take care of landscape design/garden/washing bedsheets/ability to hire cleaners if you don't want girls to do it and so on.
3) Income tax (1/10 of the total income) (can be reduced if you know the right people)
4) In bad neighborhoods, extortion money. (no need for replacement)
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Security rating. I have no idea what the f#ck it is, so my suggestion would be to have a number from 1 - 100 and modify it on:
- success/failure of every security event
- lower it if there is no security at all
- check stats of a random client vs random security guard every day and award rating accordingly
Also allow to set limits for costumer rank that girls will defend against.
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Damage... 0 - 100, to be modified on guard events and in case of gang attacks and your failure to defend...
Well, this will require a decent amount of coding so we have time to discuss jobs in the meanwhile.
You could also include some percentage of the total cost of slaves in property tax. They are property, after all.
Clearly an overkill. There is no point in over-complicating things. Also, slaves already have decent upkeep, we can just add to the description that tax is included in there... even lower it if you once again know the right people.
My take on slaves is that they should be insanely expensive for the first release (but require little upkeep as opposed to free girls that require no upkeep but expect fair wages) and all assumed to be well trained to do their duty. After we add slave training system, we'll divide them in trained (expensive) and untrained slaves (cheap).