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A combination of reduced drop rates (sometimes the gun a raider is using gets destroyed when the raider gets taken out), being able to store more than one gun per tile (so that armories don't get painfully large and take up too much real estate), and being able to melt down guns into a small amount of metal (if you don't want an armory, you don't have to have one) would solve the many-guns problem.

It would also make building a large armory somewhat challenging, so if a player enjoys collecting weaponry and displaying it, that's something they can try to do and actually be challenged on, as opposed to how it is now where it kinda happens easily.

If some kind of earthquake is implemented, it should 'turn off' the existing geysers and create new ones, similar to the way an earthquake often 'turns off' hot springs or geysers in real life (shifts the ground, heat escapes elsewhere).

This is good from a "forcing change" on the player perspective, not just dealing damage that can be repaired. You'd have to sell your old geothermal plants, find the new ones, and connect them to your power grid.

Some kind of flooring (like a reskin of concrete or tile) that's worse than the 67% movespeed of sand and soil. Mud? Uneven flooring? "Rough terrain"? Would be more ethical, less effective, and a hell of a lot easier to set up than sandbag waffles or hydroponics mazes.

Double beds that give 10/10 resting efficiency, bumping beds and sleeping places down a few notches.

Comm beacon / radio broadcaster. Reskin of drop beacon, increases chance of trader events but increases raider waves too (maybe it counts as a turret or a few turrets for the purposes of calculating raider numbers?)

Some kind of wall that doesn't form a roof (Fence, I guess). I want to expose my prisoners to the elements.

I've been playing entirely without turrets for the last few days, and exploring less cheesy ways of setting my defenses up.

Pros:
Without turrets, Cass scales the raiders really nicely. Each new raid adds one or two raiders and slowly introduces new weapons (first few attacks are pistols, then maybe a molotov or shotgun, snipers/m16s don't come until you have a motley collection of different low-level weapons.)

Actual tactics come into play against frag grenade bearing enemies. I find myself noting their names and manually focus-firing them, as well as ordering soldiers to run when a grenade is thrown their way. I have run more colonists than I care to admit INTO grenades too. It's a lot of fun.

If you're doing well (in one game, I sold every last piece of food and metal to traders for a vat-grown soldier assassin with 17 shooting and an M16) you can build turrets in or near your prison to "intimidate" the prisoners further (no actual effect) and Cass will send bigger raider waves your way.

You have to pay more attention - I wiped out eight raiders, assumed that was the full group, released all my soldiers, and my amazing constructor Ramez happily started repairing the fortifications while I did base management. A lone raider came along with a shotgun and "Ramez has been killed".

Cons

A lot of the cheesy tactics still work. The WSWSWSWS (wall sandbag wall sandbag) structure still works very well, the waffle of sandbags is still effective. Building a maze with hydroponics tables and cover at the end to tempt the enemy into running the maze is brutally effective, turns nearly any raid into a firing range for my colonists.


My opinion, based on about ten hours of no-turret play, is that the game is strictly better without them. Ty could remove them in .255 without changing anything (except maybe scaling according to the best gun you have instead of turret numbers), and the game would play heaps better.

Just tested exactly that right now. On 0.0.254b it works on captured raiders too.

(This was in 0.0.250 too, just checked and it's still around)

When your warden delivers mild or violent beatings to a prisoner, their Shooting skill improves (by 45 per hit).

Start a new game, immediately build a prison cell, draft a colonist and arrest a fellow colonist.
Set the prisoner to receive mild or violent beatings.
Watch the Shooting skill on your warden's character page. When delivering the beatings, their Shooting skill will rise.

This happens whether or not the colonist has a gun equipped. Even someone who's never touched a gun in the entire game will have their shooting skill improve.

Expected: Their melee to improve instead, I guess?