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Not being able to grow wood is problematic. With that in place, there is no real renewable option for materials, especially on open maps. In the areas I tend to play in, nothing grows on its own, needing help from me, which complicates the issue further. Once you run out of the limited stone and steel you have, your left with no easy options when it comes to making money besides spuds by the ton.

Not sure how to make a poll here, but how do you all deal with your dead?
1)Graves
2)Crematorium
3)Destroy with grenades
4)Butchers table
5)Dump in a stockpile
6)Other

Killboxing is discussed to death in other threads. Also, you don't need hydroponics in a freezing biome. There are other ways to go about feeding your colonists.

Ultimately, the game is still alpha, and a well playable one at that. Nothing is perfect yet. I agree though we need some way to drain the marshes and mud. It shouldn't be too hard to make it so a fert pump doesn't affect stone.

I have actually boiled invaders alive before. One had the misfortune of attacking a door I used as an access port to my vent system. While he was busy with that, I moved around and sealed off the area, and the temperature in the new room quickly rose over 100C.

As for temperature equalization, I tend to play on artic biomes, where it gets so cold in winter even a parka won't help you. On those maps, I use buffer rooms. The outer wall has a one block space separating inside from outside. That room is then heated, usually to about -15C. Doing so makes it easier to keep the actual inside warm when the temperature outside starts pushing -60C
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Seems this has gone FAR past my first comment. This wasn't really to talk about killboxing, but ways to get around having to use killboxing. The overall consensus here though is, you can't get around using killboxes to stay alive.

Which goes back to the first point. Just what could be put in that would allow players not require using killboxes? Even if the AI was updated to avoid them, players will still find ways to build killing floors, even internally. If the players had other, viable answers to killboxing, we would use them

Maybe colonists researching and building mechanoids to defend the colony?

:Rant incoming:... Especially in the early game, losing just a single colonist can land you in a very bad spot, as it is nigh impossible to run everything you need to do with less then three people without serious micromanaging. Generally you at least have:

A dedicated grower to keep your farms maintained.
A dedicated hauler, so all that food you just harvested doesn't go to waste.
A dedicated chef, doing nothing but cooking all day.
A dedicated scientist to get all the research done.
A dedicated doctor so you have a reasonable chance you succeed in medical tasks.

Without these five roles filled, the basic functions of a colony become rather limited.

Thinking about this some more, your whole point here is nonsense.
- Farming is entirely optional, you can hunt (or eat the two-legged meatbeasts)
- Cooking is also entirely optional, but nice; you absolutely do not have to have dedicated cooks though
- There's a pretty small amount of research in vanilla and tbh any colonist who is not totally unable to research at all can get it all done in ~150 days, and really about half of it is totally optional stuff like carpeting, hydroponics, hydraulic picks, cryptosleep caskets, ship tech
- The only doctor functions that require really good skills are installing artificial limbs.  Simple bandaging wounds is stuff anyone that is able to do medical labor at all can do.  And oh well, a dude died oops.  The artists have something to sculpt about.

All of that can be very well situational. There are a fair number of maps where hunting is not a sustainable option, and you need to do both if you really want to feed your colonists something better then potato soup. For me, generally the doctor is also the scientist, as both of those roles are situational. As for cooks, if you want to help keep your people happy, you need a good cook. Eating paste is only barely better then eating raw food. A dedicated hauler comes more into play in larger colonies, and you generally only need one pawn like that.

Regardless, your going to have particular colonists at particular jobs if you really want to make someone good at that job. More often then not, these specialized colonists are terrible when the fighting starts and expensive to lose.

Would help if we could see the entire image...

More fun would be to expand on the starship, where you can select a starship you have launched into space, and use those colonists to build a new colony elsewhere.

Well, you can build bows and spears yourself already. Guns you have to either loot, or purchase.

:Rant incoming:
As things stand in terms of protecting your colonists, you either let the turrets handle enemies, or you send out colonists to defend your base....

Except sending your colonists out is usually a bad idea. The raiders often are better equipped then your colonists, and outnumber them. In addition, some colonists can't fight at all. Especially in the early game, losing just a single colonist can land you in a very bad spot, as it is nigh impossible to run everything you need to do with less then three people without serious micromanaging. Generally you at least have:

A dedicated grower to keep your farms maintained.
A dedicated hauler, so all that food you just harvested doesn't go to waste.
A dedicated chef, doing nothing but cooking all day.
A dedicated scientist to get all the research done.
A dedicated doctor so you have a reasonable chance you succeed in medical tasks.

Without these five roles filled, the basic functions of a colony become rather limited. Losing any one of these colonists is a severe blow, especially to an early colony. Even past that, there is no way for you to easily train someone to be better in combat except in combat. A single assassin, with a sniper rifle, is the one raider I always dread seeing and is generally impossible for a colonist to take out on their own, and even if you do, your likely taking losses to do so.

Turrets are weak, can easily be out ranged by any sort of rifle, and can easily be destroyed by an enemy carrying grenades. Fighting out in the open, behind sandbags, is pointless if your out ranged. The personal shields are a good step forward, making melee a viable option. The mortars, not so much. Especially with the latest patch, mortars needing shells which require steel, which is generally in short supply anyway, they are expensive to use consistently for defense cause of very low accuracy.

Every colonist is valuable, and rarely well trained/equipped for combat, so tell me. Exactly what reason do we have not to use killboxes Tynan? What other ways do we have to protect our colonists without such high risk?

I would be much more interested to see the current game rebalanced so raids are not overwhelming. As it is now, you either turtle up hard, or try to build the spaceship before your overrun. Even in Dwarf Fortress, you generally die more often from poor planning then the actual raiders. In other words, as long as your prepared, and experienced as a player, your generally in good shape.

This game, it seems Tynan is more interested in making turtle soup and giving raiders new things, rather then giving the players more options to deal with raiders.

This is also still alpha, and the game doesn't auto update. That link also is limited use

Of late, I have been drawn to attempting the extreme temperature biomes. So, I wanted to set up a bit of a challenge I have been working on.

Map seed: Frozen
Dimentions: 200x150
Location: 30.93 E, 68.27 N
Starting Month: September
Storyteller: RR Casual or above
Starting Colonists: Clerk, Settler, Sex Slave
No mods.

Average temperature is -20C, and I have seen it dip as low as -60C. This map also drops you on top of two different and dangerous rooms.

Well, we could try something akin to that classic dwarf fortress killer if handled wrong... LAVA!  Random Cave-ins are another option, though it would be wise to add in a support structure to prevent it.

On another note though, I tend to agree as well, and with the addition of siege engines, it has made it that much more enticing to go underground. You just need to keep in mind the risks of collapse if you dig carelessly.

Really depends if you have a laptop or desktop. Most desktops will play at 1920, while most laptops will play around 1366.