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To balance things, mechanoids should be able to capture and reprogram your colonists, inserting a control chip into their central nervous system which overrides their motor functions remotely. They remain conscious throughout the process as they're forced to war against their former allies. They feel pain and it effects their mood but the chip does not and it forces them to fight, protect damaged ship parts and remain conscious the entire time until the body is dead.

I started a thread on this two years ago. I really do wish for a parry or block system to be implemented so that level 20 melee hunters would cease being blinded or crippled by animals when they deign to be so arrogant as try and hunt outside of a suit of power armour.

I propose:
A parry or block can (based on a roll derived from skill difference) result in a reduction of delay of the defender's attack, resulting in a counter attack and thus keeping rapid defences from bogging down combat
Higher skill should reduce melee attack delay in general compounded with manipulation enhancements and weapon quality. A skilled fighter is more conditioned to strike quick and has a better sense of timing.
Knockdowns and brief incapacitations should be a thing, especially with blunt attacks. The defender is hit and has the wind knocked out of them, resulting in them lying on the ground for a little while, catching their breath.
Speaking of breath - to limit melee there should be a stamina meter of some kind. Breath bionics drugs and smoke can adjust its regeneration while attacking, special moves and exertion (sprinting?) deplete it. Critical strikes such as kicking the solar plexus can deplete an enemy's breath making them unable to attack as effectively. Higher melee skill reduces breath cost of attacking due to conditioning and efficiency of movement.

If special moves are to be a thing maybe some can be triggered manually by the player controlling soldier pawns while others are opportunistic only? Further yet, how about special moves based on traits? A jogger can (randomly?) break into a sprint to close distance to melee attack someone, someone who's industrious can launch into a series of rapid efficient strikes, a brawler can randomly throw unarmed attacks with their feet and hands even when wielding a weapon, trigger happy has a higher chance of firing even while being attacked in melee, nudists (especially creepy or attractive ones) can distract, abrasives can goad their enemies into attacking when they should be defending, kind pawns are more likely to knock out and stun human opponents in place of more deadly melee blows, masochism and steadfast/iron will has a chance of not being interrupted by melee blows, cannibals can bite their opponents, psychopaths can cause more pain with their blows, blood lust can put pawns into frenzies, too smarts can read their opponents and have a small chance to perfectly defend or disallow their targets a defence entirely by simply outplaying them (a test of melee vs melee skill?), masochists can take a damaging blow and retaliate instantly before their opponent can even retract their weapon to defend, prosthophiles can sometimes use their prosthetics in various interesting ways, neurotics can panic and freak out, green thumbs can... jam their thumbs into an opponent's eye? You get the picture. This is much more likely to be a mod than anything but if Rimworld is truly about creating interesting stories that have mechanical meaning maybe traits should be about more than just providing static modifiers and blocking off some jobs.

Your crops are stricken with a rare blight! All of your potatoes become explosive. On top of that, they are launched in random directions like rocket propelled grenades.

This plague also affects chickens.

Yeah. Ballistic masks, visor-goggles, circlets, bandannas.

The pause button has durability. When it becomes worn out a new one must be crafted out of plasteel and hyperweave and installed manually - during which time the player cannot move the screen because it would force the pawn doing the installation to chase after it.

For vanity purposes, I would love there to be a type of headwear that can be worn under hair layers (might look a bit wonky with short-cropped hairstyles) to provide a bit of protection while leaving the colonist's hair visible.

It'd make sense that nanobots would repair damage, but even if fixed it would cause some memory loss, perhaps losing some skill levels and XP while regaining functionality.

Scars are an interesting mechanic and they add flavour but it's downright unrealistic and unfun for EVERY scar to leave permanent pain and debility. If a colonist has three old gunshots from being in half a dozen firefights what does it say to his enemies? In Rimworld it says  that the penalties those scars instil completely overshadow the one level of weapon skill that colonist earned from all that combat, so they can take 'im. I'm not against debilitating wounds but it would be nice to be able to let the characters adapt and grow thanks to the damage they take. If they had to deal with a lot of pain, some pain resistance should develop. If they had to deal with a lot of hardship some stability would be nice. Otherwise characters just lose value along with pieces of themselves as if they are machines.

Headbands, goggles and other headwear that doesn't obscure the wearer's hair.

The ability for colonists to carry more than one stack at a time.

The ability for a colonist, especially surgeons, to call idlers for assistance - hauling things to them, cleaning the work area, etc.

How possible would it to create a Stem-Cell Tissue item that can be used to surgically patch up scars? Seems kind of silly to just replace a whole limb to fix what is some muscle and nerve damage.

Another idea: bodyparts in the vat taking time to grow, like plants.

Speaking of which, I'd love to see a way to use very high-level social characters to entice visitors into joining the fort- err, colony, by non-kidnapping means.

A significant portion, the majority in fact, of real life close combat training is all about defending yourself from harm. Parrying, blocking, harassing, exploiting reach. So it seems a bit SILLY when my 18 skill noble with a bionic arm and Excellent steel sword trades blow for blow with a skill 3 unarmed tribal for 30 seconds and wins by a small margin. It makes me wonder what the melee skill even does. Does it just reduce miss chance like ranged weapons? I know melee weapons are new and haven't had much tweaking done, but just in case.

My recommendations (if any of this is present in the game, I have not noticed at all while watching my melee specialists)

Increased attack rate (decreased windup/cooldown): Skill should improve attack rate due to increased agility and the warrior's familiarity with basic movements. I don't imagine this being particularly extreme, something like a %5 bonus to the weapon's agility multiplier per skill level.
Increased damage: A skilled warrior knows how to stick it where it does the most harm. A minor improvement to damage would be nice, perhaps something as simple as adding the weapon skill (-3?) directly onto the weapon's base damage.
Active Defence: When fighting another enemy that's using melee, a superior fighter has a proportionally slim chance of getting hit. Someone with 20 skill should be next to impossible to scratch by anyone he or she can see and parry. Conversely, a weaker defender would have a tough time defending against a stronger attacker (but not to the same extent as attacking, I'd imagine) I don't know how rimworld currently handles melee miss chance, but this should be taken into account, either as a penalty for the weaker fighter or a skill check for the defender.

Getting Fancy: the following is a series of 'moves' that I think belong in vanilla rimworld to spice up combat and have it resemble the injury system in randomness and complexity.

Charge: When approaching a target, a melee attacker can speed up to close the distance quickly. This gives ranged attackers less time to draw a bead.
Disarm: A common move in fencing of all types is taking away an opponent's weapon. Many martial arts teach techniques that allow a defender to turn a weapon against its wielder, a move most popularly used against knives.
Dangerous Edges: Sharp weapons are dangerous. They are especially dangerous when all you have to defend against them are your bare hands. Even blunt weapons are difficult to defend against without having something inert to interpose. Unarmed combatants, except for those of utterly superior skill, should have a tough time against armed ones as a successful defence on anyone's part can leave them with injured hands. Perhaps a defender can use their hands to divert wounds that would have otherwise landed on their vitals?

Currently the best way for me to counter invasions is to claim all of the visible stuctures on the map the moment my colonists arrive, making enemies randomly attack walls I don't need instead of my stuff~

Maybe that the ships was more complex? that you actually built a ship you could live in and that stuff, so when you launch into space to a new planet it takes like 1 in game month for you to come to the new place and that time you can spend growing stuff on the ship and build on it. This would add like that you needed oxygen tanks,  space suits, cockpits, and maybe even a new skill.

I would like that very much. I don't, however, have my hopes up even a little bit. That seems too fun to ever exist. (actually more like too niche, hard to balance, slightly tedious to program and slightly too much like FTL and StarBound to ever see the light of day). Also, cryosleep kind of means that all the colonists would spend the travel time sleeping since there's no FTL travel so there would be no need to grow anything or for the ship to be self sufficient.
Though imagine random events such as the colony's ship being invaded by pirates or getting tractor beam'd into a mechanoid station.

Personally I'd appreciate having the ability to use the ship to travel to a new location on the same planet or another, retaining as much crew and supplies as it can carry.

An alternative to medicine for anaesthesia too and a crafting component for molotovs.
Ethanol powered generators?
Mostly though, it should provide a way to prevent mental breakdowns, or at least a good chance to do so. Someone who drinks a little should have a reduction to mood penalties from seeing corpses, poor environment and cold temperature (they don't feel it as much). Their mood is still sour, but not as much, keeping them from going over the edge unless they are way too upset. More booze means they can ignore their bad situation even more for a while but become increasingly more useless. Reaction to alcohol can perhaps be a trait. Happy drunks get a mood bonus, sour drunks get a mood penalty, alcoholics drink past their tolerance recreationally or they get a mood penalty as suggested (and if they are feeling a mental breakdown coming on they'll try to get drunk even from forbidden stockpiles). Crazy drunks act unpredictably when boozed up, running around as if they're on fire, trying to do jobs they're not fit to do, taking potshots at wildlife.