I don't think it is correct to say other developers have not planned for asic. Some new coins are much more aggressive in dealing with this issue and the problem is handled as best can be so far from the coins launch. I shall not name names because I am not trying to hijack your thread.
And I think that talking about a hardfork of any coin pretty much means that coin already has death hanging over it. Basically a hardfork is just creating a new coin because the old one is not working. So far adjustable n-factor of any scrypt coin seems to be the temporary solution. VTC was unique in this way but any coin with increasing n-factor means it is just a matter of time before its memory requirement is more suited to cpu mining. No one seems to mention the increasing speed of cpu and faster dram coming to market, where will this be in 2-5 years?
The increasing speed of computers is factored in in the N-schedule. But what the future brings is anyone's guess.
Why in F4cks sake would a hardfork kill a coin? Yes, you create a new coin technically speaking, but that does not mean the old coin is 'broken'. In this case it would be no more than maintanance to stay true to its specifications.
The moment i doubt the asic resistance of this or any future coin i will dump the shit out of it. If i want a asic-raped coin i''ll stay with bitcoin and hope for the best. There has not been any coin including bitcoin that has seriously considered and chosen to stay true to its claims and the users, and i'm fed up with this.
So i would appreciate some planning ahead. There is none at the moment. Heck, on vertcoin.org there is no word on the possibility of a fork, just the hope scrypt-n will keep asics out. For how long? 1 Year? 2? I bet its no more than 1 year. What will happen then? What is the plan? Can we be informed before this happens? Will vertcoin communicate its stand publicly? Will vertcoin when push comes to shove do the 'right' thing? We are at a defining moment in time to make vertcoin future proof, and i don't want to see it turn into yet another fire and forget coin.