Lots of suggestions

[XeroJoy]

1.) go to other faction cities:
Pretty self explanatory, you send some people to go to other factions.  This would be awesome because you could attack other heavily fortified bases, or trade with your closest allies. So many possibilities, they may request your help to defend their base, you could bring resources to them and trade with them, you could take over other faction bases (which would be huge and nearly impossible to take over because of the sheer number of other people, more on this later). More importantly this gives the player something to do in the late game when they have 9k silver, 5k metal, 10k potatoes, 30 full batteries, and a zone filled with lavish meals and charge rifles. Now they can go and explore, put their men at risk, explore the tribesmen's stone houses and growing areas, or the pirate's fortresses and heavy turrets (real turrets that aren't improvised), or the outland cities with stone brick streets and flowers and lights (similar to borderlands' small cities that you can walk through…only much larger). And more (the world that I played on only had 3 faction types, tribe, pirate, and out lands, not sure if there are more types already but so far it's awesome)

2.) Faction relation upgrade
Expanding on what was said above, the player could attack another base and force them to pay a fine, or better yet, prevent them from attacking if the enemy colony fears you enough (and ofc once this fear level goes down enough, the player may receive a rebellion and…that's not good if your people are in the city, or it could be good if you successfully quell it using guns) Or the opposite could happen, I've tested what happens if raiders come and you hide your people away in your caves or buildings where they can't get you. For now, they just seem to light some things on fire, and then they give up and go back. What if they instead actually looted your resources, or took one of your men as prisoner, or better yet forced you to pay them over and over again, and in exchange you wouldn't be attacked by that faction and their men would stay near your base and protect it from other raiders (because you are paying them a percentage of your resources). This could continue until you rebelled or ran out of resources or rebelled against them.

But it could also supplement the allied faction relationships as well as you would be able to trade with other factions, and talk with them using diplomacy (i.e. the person who's social level is level 20 could give compliments and… be political idk). You could bring resources to their faction base and trade them similar to the way that people trade between the interstellar starships that pass by from time to time. This trade could help to maintain and improve relations (i.e. giving guns to tribal factions could make them really happy, or food to pirates who have no farms (if you somehow make friends with pirates)).

Another addition could be missions given out by friendly factions, but only if your faction asks another faction if something needs to be done.

3.) Vehicles (storage, troop, and combat)
These could be the cars that allow your men to go to other factions. They could be researched, cost a lot of resources, and there could be a bunch of different types depending on the research level (ranging from tribal, to futuristic…basically every time period that is represented in this game).


Combat vehicles:  There could range from mobile cannons that can be dragged to different areas and use shells as ammunition, to catapults that fire slag and rock debris at different targets. There could also be actual vehicles such as tanks that fire shells and are drivable and very hard to destroy.

Troop and resource transports: These could be short-range rockets that send your men into orbit and allow them to fall from orbit onto the enemy bases (similar to how some factions do it in those horribly annoying raids that kill at least one person and light half of the base on fire in the best case scenario), it would be quick and for combat purposes and storage purposes only (i.e. giving resources to other people). There could also be real cars that actually carry troops on them on the back, even a bus would be good in this case because it would allow you to cary many of your colonists, and allow them to return to base more quickly (i.e. you'd be in another faction area, and then have to wait for 1 in game day if you had no vehicle (or it would fast forward if all of your colonists were traveling) but if you had a vehicle it could be much faster(such as half a day)). Furthermore you could also carry resources in the places where you'd normally place people, this would allow you to bring resources that could be used to trade with other factions (see above section on visiting other faction bases, you could plausibly bring resources on your bus and then trade with the other factions and then take the resources back to your base in that same vehicle, or maybe instead of resources you're bringing slaves or prisoners of other factions).

4.) equipment
Basically this would be items that the colonists could use. Backpacks that allow colonists to carry more resources, or carry equipment. Actual pickaxes could help colonists to mine more at a faster rate (and increase melee attack damage). Wielding rods could help people repair things faster. knives could help butchers and inspire fear when used by a warden, and hammers could help stoneworkers (and also be used to increase fear in prisoners). Backpacks could allow colonists to carry equipment and a weapon at the same time (without backpacks, the colonist would only be able to equip only one tool.

5.) Hostile Animals
This could be many things, a crowd of wild dogs that comes into the area but can also be tamed. There could be giant alien beasts that pass by, and attack your base, ramming through stone and metal walls, eating your colonists if the creature sees them. People can decide to either hide from it (and survive) or try to attack it (once it choses a colonist to attack, it never stops, to de-aggrivate it, all colonists would have to hide while the colonist is…eaten) These could be rare and reward a butt-load of meat, silver and metal(from the machines and people it ate). Basically high reward, high risk boss fight.

6.) multiplayer

I know that this game is in alpha, but expanding on the "going to other bases" idea, technically speaking, if an AI storyteller decides that it wants to attack a colony, and at the same time, another player is waiting to attack (this player could've sent their troops into orbit, and the troops are orbiting while the game finds an eligible target). Although this idea seems off for the future, just thought it should be considered.

[Coenmcj]

2) It has been stated that faction complexity will have some work done on it. (it is a fairly new feature after all)

3) There is currently a mod being made to accommodate for this, however there are more pressing core features before something such as vehicles are addressed in the vanilla game.

6) Has been addressed several times, it is low on the priority board.

[Pulaskimask]

2) has a lot of potential for growth and development and should be promising in the future. Maybe some day there will be a Mafia mod that lets you send home dead raiders cut up in a bucket back to their homes to increase that colony's fear of you.