Hmm, autoupdated server would be good thing. Currently is also autoupdated, if you running it from Steam, but it will not kill server so who know what would happens.

If someone can make scheduled meetups for matches, then it would be good. You can use discord for that https://discordapp.com/invite/HfvNAna as start.

You can try this, but I don't have time to managing it: https://discord.gg/HfvNAna

Making it easier for someone to set up their own server may help. I look and find 2 available and 160 is the lowest ping I've gotten

I have a game server machine and started looking at firing up a murnatan server. It requires a valid logon to get the game files via steamcmd (vs anonymous logon) which I'm very hesitant to do, who wants their steam credentials on a machine exposed to the internet? I could transfer steam installs and hope it works but perhaps I need only the murnatan game directory?

Getting the server to work with steamcmd would help entice game server providers to offer it as an option (if user counts increase) since they could then just modify their existing scripts.

Default connection entry is to localhost but there's no option to start a local server. I'll bet that I can start one underneath it

In any event, I'll get it working but making it easier to fire up an instance may help increase the number of available servers which may attract more players.

I miss the madness of 30 vs 30 trem games :p

About synchronizing code: it is not so easy like in Q3 and such engines. In UE is souce code connected with assets more closely. For example when you want to change default HP of player, then you have to do it in UE editor, not in C++ code. I think that for working simultaneously on more versions is possible, but merging it together is almost impossible.

About AI: UE have own AI system and should be quite easy for default game. But I think, no, I know that for this custom game it will be much more work/problems.

The raw surface of the gamelogic should be sufficient to help smash out basic physics and related bugs without a need for leaking potential security and the alike. Synchronising source changes isn't needed with the availability of patch submissions however it does mean that the user's end must always be updated and patches needed to be tested for potential clashes if the user's end isn't updated or if an update rolled between the user finishing their work and a new update that is related to the section of the gamelogic (e.g. an update may rework the routing order of the marauder zap, user fixes the way the marauder zap hit detection system)

Speaking of which, we need at least a publically announced regular dev game going to help boost the population as it is.

Regarding bot AI, I can provide some advanced concepts (that no other game from what I know has yet to combine) to the aiming system so they won't be so aimbotty but it will require the use of the latency compensation system similar to quake's unlagged or a similar memory system to feed off. I have not seen how the UE3/UE4 system works so it may or may not be easily applicable.