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Or, if you take long enough, the prisoner will go crazy from cabin fever, and attack his surroundings and other prisoners or colonists until put down.

This has not been my experience. If I don't ship with at least a Social 7, then they consistently go crazy and I have to put them down.
As long as you have a warden speaking to them, this won't happen.

IMHO, killboxes aren't cheating. Now, sowing your killbox entrance with a field of devilstrand, so that your raiders take the Ugly Environment mental penalty so they break faster (like I do) is cheating.

The raider AI is just frustratingly non-goal oriented. My first game in A8, I got so distracted by all the new stuff that I forgot to build defenses  on my west entrance, and none of my starting settlers had a decent weapon skill, so the raiders mowed through the defense, broke down my wooden doors, and then broke through the EAST door and walked into my turret defenses. THAT is frustrating.

Has anyone developed a strategy to maximize non-lethal takedowns so you can get the best number of prisoners for recruitment?

I have only played once, but I dont see any reason for slave traders at all. You will eventually recruit that guy at 7%, vs seeing slave traders randomly, and with high prices for people.

Or, if you take long enough, the prisoner will go crazy from cabin fever, and attack his surroundings and other prisoners or colonists until put down.

In the category of "more sci-fi feel," how about a pistol equivalent to the laser rifle? Same gun sprite, pistol equivalent stats, just need a new graphic for the gun.

I've actually been trying to kill off one of my high-melee  Abrasive colonists by making him a hunter, but at Melee 8 and a gladius, he can take out a wild boar and anything smaller with ease.

Early slave trading feels much less useful to me now that they don't accept anything but silver and medkits.

A new tab in the Overview window, which shows what colonists are wearing and wielding, with the already-extant Click-to-Zoom-To option. Possibly also showing related combat skills or their actual combat statistics (from the Info screen). A more advanced version of this feature might allow you to assign weapons, clothing and armor from selected stockpiles/racks.

Since it would be problematic to send US on raids of other camps, how about a Comms option to goad a hostile faction into attacking us?

Is there a list of user submitted characters anywhere? It'd be fun to add other people's characters to our games.

1. For some reason, Colonists always seem to select the furthest unforbidden meal they can get their hands on. They should go for the closest grub.

2. Likewise, their preference for how far they are willing to walk in order to sit down and eat is not in scale for the game. They should be willing to walk about twice as far in search for a chair.

3. There are very few character backgrounds that grant medical skill. The pool of potential backgrounds could easily be expanded by harvesting the best of the user-submitted backgrounds. This could easily be done with the help of your forum moderators.

4. During initial colonist selection, there could be an option to guide the randomization to focus on the skills you are looking for. This could be as simple as a check box that when set to YES, auto-discards any background that forbids that task.

5. Keyboard shortcuts for everything, including the various menus.

6. Windows that you can shoot through.

7. I notice that my colony stays listed on the world I've landed them on when I launch a new colony on that world. Why not include them in the faction list and randomly generate their relationship score?

8. Allow trading with neutral factions on your world. This should be pretty simple, since you're just booting them into the existing comms system.

"More Sci Fi Themed Stuff"
9. Alien critters wandering around. They can have the exact same stats and icons (maybe colored differently) as existing beasts. Maybe some that glow in the dark?

10. Shield fencing - easy to destroy and shoot through when not powered.

11. Alien cloth crops that provide different colored fabric. "Martian Cotton," "Centauri Hemp."

12. Ship wreckage : randomly generated metal wall rooms, like the existing stone buildings.

Edited to add: It would also be nice if colonist immediate hauled things after harvesting/chopping/mining. Slightly tricky, since you want them to finish their series of mining/chopping chores before then proceeding to haul, but it wouldn't take that long and would emphasize the difference between non-haulers and haulers.

Researching carpets should also allow you to turn cloth and wood into couches.

ETA again: The trading screen should use a different rubric for measuring the value of the sale price. Right now, it's always a "very low price," because we're substantially below the price we would BUY it for. Give me some idea of whether or not I'm getting a good value for it! The difference between selling Gold at $9.50 versus $8.25 should be color-coded.