It may happen that one gets disconnected because of network issues. In that case, it takes a while for the server to disconnect the user (from 5 to 10 minutes). During that time, connection always fails because there is already someone with the desired nick. What other clients do, and I what I'd like idle to do, is autogenerate a suitable replacement name, such as "nick_".
A subtle point to consider when implementing this: when renaming jbloggs to jbloggs_ or whatever, it's necessary to make sure that Mission Control doesn't think jbloggs_ is what we want to be called in future! (Perhaps the awkward interaction between the 'account' parameter and the nickname in IRC will make that happen automatically, though. IRC is an irritating protocol...)
Annoyingly at the moment, you actually have to change your nick in Mission Control, so it can't be any worse.
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