You ever get those somewhat useless characters that can do nothing but shoot at stuff, but then you realize you've already exterminated the local wildlife with frag grenades and miniguns? Your only move from there is using them as soldiers, right?
So you hit that draft button and post them up at a checkpoint, waiting for any baddies to drop in so they can get a face full of T-9 incendiary bolts. Soon enough, however, that guy gets hungry! You have to undraft him manually and let him do his thing, before posting him up again. Lot of manual labor for a task that is only situationally handy.
My request here is that we get a 'guard mode' set up for our colonists. To enable guard mode, you hit a hotkey/click a button next to the draft button and their current weapon, and then you click somewhere else to designate an area to guard. The colonist ordered to do this won't be kept under strict control like the drafted units are (unless the target is in their guard area), but will go back to eat and sleep every now and then, and will patrol a small area instead of staying still. Yes? No? Maybe?
instead of just guard mode we should list at which level a colonist should break to eat/sleep
while
drafted / guarding / working
Perhaps they just automatically get drafted once raiders attack you and they keep their patrols around automatic turrets?
Some soldiers can't fight and odd turret placement would mean a death trap for your own colonists