Anything that makes a playing session less time consuming would be a good thing.

Perhaps a "Word of Recall" type item that can be found randomly like hearts and activated like destruct?
Specifically for the casual player. If it comes with a cost (or a risk to lose all coins)
than the guys who dominate the center won't use it, and the game mechanics are not dumbed down too much.


If it later turns out that unsupervised generals get killed most of the time when they walk through the chokepoints
to the inner ring... well, then we also need a dangerous to use random group teleport item.

Basically, new players who do their name_firstupdate at block 254999 will die but those who name_firstupdate at 255000 will live (for another 1-12 days)
and the map is never completely devoid of players?

Perhaps some other programs using your disk too much. If you are on windows, the usual culprits (that need to be deactivated) are
'Windows search' and the 'Cache server' of antivirus software.

It is also good to clean out old, inflated wallets regularly. (the 'Transfer to' function is really useful)

Normally (i.e. 1 block per minute coming in) huntercoin reads/writes a few hundred KB/s on average as long as size of wallet.dat is <10MB.
With a 50MB wallet.dat it's 2-3MB/s and so on.

Yep. Not easy but huntercoin can become the one true chronokings, over time...

Totally serious.
If you can't really be killed by other players or disasters, then the coins are as save as in an (unencrypted) wallet.
And there should be only a few of these units, not thousands.
Start saving up! 

Huntercoin needs 'rare' player classes. They could be created if a new player name has a special property/checksum
and sufficient fee is sent for name_new tx and should
a) act as a coin sink
b) encourage players of the same color to cooperate
c) give no direct advantage for rich guys versus other players of the same color, only bragging rights.

Example:


'Champion of <color>'

Cost: 50000 HUC.

Passive ability: (perhaps restricted to some part of the map)
Every soldier in the champion's vicinity (distance <= 12 squares or so) attacks like a general (2 squares destruct radius).
If the attack kills an enemy, loot is not dropped but evenly distributed between the team of that soldier
and one randomly choosen general in the vicinity of the champion. The champion has the same chance to get 50%
of the loot like every one else.


Rational players would rally around the champion(s) wherever they choose to attack.

Expensive player classes need to be mostly immortal, of course. If destructed, they either just go back to spawn,
or can be recreated at normal cost (i.e. 20 HUC) for the same name and address.
For safe cash out, their own reward address immediately gets 96% (or more) of the initial fee if self-destructed.

Is this easy to implement? 

There's some 'guidance' for the upcoming gameplay changes and optimisations:
http://forum.huntercoin.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=87c47cbb056264c0ce2bab62abe5dd5e&topic=96.msg577#msg577
Sounds good so far...perhaps time to start brainstorming about gameplay improvements for the next but one update?

When the disaster triggers, will it come out of the blue or is it determined some time (2 days or so) in advance?

I think knowing the time in advance is better.
The day before the disaster (if known) would be interesting to play when all coins from center come out, and players
(especially those who can afford to hoard their coins) need some time to prepare for a longish playing session after the disaster.
Bots are always ready.

I just realized that Huntercoin is the most privacy-centric coin in existence.

The game works as one giant mixer. (this wasn't even a design goal, right? )
And a non aggressive bot like BGB's demo can convert coins into newly mined, pristine ones.
It's the perfect solution for anonymity while things like Zerocoin or Darkcoin will come up with imperfect solutions.

"An administrator will try to sell the company's assets, and many creditors, including those who had bitcoins with the exchange, are unlikely to get any money back."

If this is true and not just sloppy reporting it would mean the bitcoins (and dollars) at the exchange are just subordinated debt and Gox owes someone else the equivalent of 200k BTC?

Not sure about the PHP code but rudimentary interactive bot features in the Qt-client or Mithril's will be the turning point.
Simple additional functions like "auto destruct if enemy comes in range" and "go back to spawn if have more than X coins, then
go to x,y and wait" would resolve the situation in the center very quickly.

Commanding minions is fun, they just shouldn't be helpless without their overlord.

The name_update command would also accept waypoints calculated by a different algorithm. (I think. As long as you don't get stuck.)
You could even calculate a route to avoid stationary enemy players...

There doesn't seem to be any negative consequences of getting this warning.
(Empirically from playing, I didn't check the code)

Install Qt Creator, open huntercoin-qt.pro with it, click "Build | Build project huntercoin-qt".
This gives you either the executable (huntercoin-qt) or a newby readable error message.

This client is great.

I have a feature request: could you add an acoustic notification when a coin spawns adjacent to one of your players?
This would help human players (especially in the future when bots will be less stupid and recognizable and killable than now).

Blockchain size is not a problem at about 10..20 GB per year. And the old db tormenting mechanical HDDs is not a problem
if the block data becomes available as a separate download. After the first 2 GB perhaps?

And something to highlight the moles which are always nearby. Perhaps some numbers indicating movement.
- last turn the player has moved, and
- travelled distance last 50 turns (i.e. 10 if all visited grids would fit in a 10*10 square)

Also:
- age in turns (for the kamikazes)
- loot-from-dead-players coins taken (for the moles)

A warning about the "coloured banking strip" x turns to instadeath limit
(and don't forget to press "Go") should be on the first page. In big, fat letters

There is no other inactivity timer in the game, right?

Perhaps Chronokings will have Wesnoth Silver Mage type movement for some player classes. 

But block times shorter than 1 minute would make it hopeless for humans (against auto 'destruct'ing bots).