Update: This has been fixed since we wrote this article, so please check the construction cost before you deploy a holo-building
As users build holo-buildings on their properties, some of them have already stumbled upon an observation, which is if you place a holo-building less than 5 cu. mt. it comes for free!
This happens because the holo-building cost calculator rounds to the nearest cent.
And that is not all, but you can repeat this iteration multiple times as many times you like on the same property, as long as every time you place the holo-building that is less than 5 cu. mt. Theoretically, you can build a limitless holo-buildings for free - of course subject to the time you decide to dedicate to this task.
Is it worth it?
We tried running this on a property and it takes about 15-20 seconds to place a free holo-building. If you extrapolate that - you can gain up to 900 cubic meters worth holo-building space in an hour which will save you $0.9. So you really have to decide if your time is worth $0.9/hour or not. Therefore, the free holo-building hack may really only be worth doing on your smaller properties (say less than 20 tile properties), which would relatively require smaller storage space and maybe just a couple free holo-buildings.
Potential concerns
What if, there was a script/ bot which could do this repetitive task for you while you do something more productive. Well this is why we write this, to ensure the E2 dev team is aware of this potential misuse and maybe prevent this. And if this loop-hole cascades into thousands of holo-buildings :-
a) Its unfair to paying users who wont use a bot
b) Potentially makes the website heavy with all the free holo-buildings, as bots can do this all day 24x7x365.
We want to be abundantly clear that E2News would ask you to stay away from any such behavior esp. using bots to gain in-game assets, as we are not sure if it conflicts with the usage terms of earth2io, and whether such actions could potentially be interpreted as that.
Buzzkill?
We feel the rounding of the cost for holo-buildings to the nearest cent was done for convenience by E2. Without the use of bots/ scripts it should be fine to use this feature and maybe offers small property owners some smaller free holo-buildings. Again, you have to decide for yourself whether your time is worth more than $0.9/ hour.