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I think the more relevnant and critical question here is what's up with that bicycle dude who carries sandbags over the border each day. Eventually, after many checks and sending the sand to labs and stuff, the border guards give up. 'alright son, I know you are smuggling something here, we just cannot fathom what. If you tell me what you smuggle, there won't be any consequences, I swear.'
'Bicycles...'

to OP as well: I started with Rimworld only 2 weeks ago and without reading anything on forums or wiki. Sure enough, it took me several matches (the first lastes 15 mins before defeat, the 2nd like 25, the 3rd like 40, you see where I am going...) to learn the ropes. The 'adaptive tutor' only ever mentions something when it's already (almost) too late and is definitely no tutorial. Basically it just gives some hints.
However this learning by doing was a lot of fun! It's rare that you are defeated in a game and feel like you had a really good time and some crazy story to tell

Agree on above that a tutorial map would be awesome. Sure, there's free building mode but that is still learning by doing. I understand some people would like to know most of the stuff beforehand.

milon, while I have not personally coded AI, I assume comparison with other similar simulations will reveal quickly enough that yes, there is still quite a bit of improvement possible without straining hardware too much.
What was talked about above can be implemented by heuristic approaches that won't be perfect in a mathematical sense but pretty much indistinguishable from any player's POV.
We are not talking about whole new action/reaction patterns here. It's mostly about smoothing the edges. Hauling is a good example, it just needs some additional checks (check area nearby / check time requirements). Other stuff like direct orders should just get some area effect so that if there are identical tasks (like fires, plants to be removed, floor to be smoothed) in the tiles next to the targeted one, pawn continues with those.
The only thing requiring actual changes in movement decision by AI would be to improve pawns so they 'see' nearby hauling or other tasks more intelligently and do not go far far away before finishing identical tasks nearby. And since distance measuring is already in place it should be very simple to make them chose nearest first.

Nodnod @ OP on all points. Good summary of where Rimworld currently lacks. It's still huge fun but the prio system and UI in particular are in dire need of improvements. Which is fine because it's alpha. Looking forward to the next changes.

Hi,

I just started a colony game and eventhough I looked really hard on the whole map, there did not seem to be any ship parts. Is this random? Because it kinda sucks to start without them and their huge boost in machine parts.
Thanks for letting me know

I think this is partly why there is Phoebe. She will not usually send big threats while you have to fight others, simply because there is a much longer average time between 'negative' events.
Clearly none of the story tellers give a fig about the situation you are in. That's part of Rimworld. It's meant to be unfair at times.
However I can totally feel your pain because stories like the described happened to me too a few times. Especially the part about berserker patients with unresolved issues pets at their heels
Still I think this is a part of what makes this game fun. You are not meant to fight even odds every time, sometimes you just pathetically lose to freak coincidences. If you do not like this, play Phoebe and NEVER the RNG guy. Ever.

There's definitely a lot of rather stupid stuff going on when you keep an eye on your colonists for a while. I think one of the biggest (although possibly intended) flaws is that priority beats everything. If mining is set to 1, everything 'right' of it will be completely and totally ignored by the pawn until all mining tasks are done. It would be **MUCH** better to have a percentual system where 1-tasks are done most of the time, 2-tasks some of the time, 3 rarely and 4 almost never. This would ensure that you do not have to modify manual priorities so often (which I personally find is needed far more often than is comfortable) and that all tasks are done, albeit with different timings.

However to get back to the topic: absolutely agree that manual ordering should make the pawn work a sensible amount of time or 'steps' on the assigned task and not quit after 1 damn tile or whatever.
Hauling is a BIG problem, especially because if you set a pawn to high prio hauling, he'll never do anything else in all likelihood (with the millions of tons of stuff that needs to be hauled all the time). Once again the only thing that helps is to set all pawns to prio 1 hauling for a time, then switch back to 2-3. Annoying and unnecessary with a good AI.
BTW why do couples not automatically use double beds?

Also, I propose to let manual orders overwrite restricted areas. Heat wave especially needs this or else you have to enable and disable larger areas for every damn task that is outside your cooled room.

Hope AI gets buffed a fair bit in the future!