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A doctor suffered a mental break while she was treating a patient and went from healing him to stabbing him.

There needs to also be a ranged method of fighting fires, like hoses or fire extinguishers, because, as things are right now, certain structures are pretty much guaranteed to be lost if they catch fire due to the fact that their middle sections are out of colonists' reach (I can't tell you how many solar panels I've lost because of this).

Walls with built-in objects. Built-in lights, for example.

You could have weapons like tasers. Rapid takedown, but limited to melee range. Or tranquilizers. Long range non-lethal, but hard to hit with. The problem I could see with it though it that raiding parties would become much too likely to yield live prisoners, bolstering your numbers too quickly. Maybe tie a colonist's ability to use such weapons properly to a relevant skill? If the skill is too low, the weapon could become accidentally lethal. That or make them have limited ammo that's really hard to manufacture.

make it like the current rocket launchers, one use, but instant incap with no damage. must buy it from a trader for 500-1000 silver.

Perfect. Limited supplies and unpredictable availability force you to decide which people are worth using up such a valuable investment. Makes for good stories.

You could have weapons like tasers. Rapid takedown, but limited to melee range. Or tranquilizers. Long range non-lethal, but hard to hit with. The problem I could see with it though it that raiding parties would become much too likely to yield live prisoners, bolstering your numbers too quickly. Maybe tie a colonist's ability to use such weapons properly to a relevant skill? If the skill is too low, the weapon could become accidentally lethal. That or make them have limited ammo that's really hard to manufacture.

If you give the order to build a conduit under a wall, have it become a conduit wall.

Something that just occurred to me thanks to a colonist wandering off during a raid and dying: an alert zone. Zone an area that any undrafted colonist goes to and stays within when the alarm is active.

I think this is what OP meant with his post.

It's similar, but not quite the same i think. There's both a rally point and a safe house idea, which ofc both are valid and could be implemented in several ways.

For me, a rally point should be an object (like a flag or the statue in the middle of town), and pawns marked for rally would draft and meet there when you sound the alarm.

Then, we could have a safe zone, which works like home zone, and non-rally pawns would be 'confined' in the area, when under alarm. If getting another zone is too much trouble, it should work with home zone, you'd just have to be careful with what you set as home, definetly not the outside of walls or the middle of your killbox.

bonus: when you set an alarm, all marked for rally would go for the nearest armory\weapon cache for arming up weapons and armor. It could be the nearest random weapon or a pre-set inventory

This is exactly what I meant. Rallied colonists go one place, non-rallied ones go another.

Something that just occurred to me thanks to a colonist wandering off during a raid and dying: an alert zone. Zone an area that any undrafted colonist goes to and stays within when the alarm is active.

Would be a great trading item as well. You could sell it to ships, entice prisoners with it, maybe even have trade ships that sell really high-quality liquor.

Maybe even have the colonists throw parties with it to boost everyone's mood or invite members of other towns to boost relations.

The player could have colonists craft tools that speed up tasks (drill for mining, saw for construction, etc.). Balanced by having skill determine chance of injury when using, maybe even setting minimum skill requirements to use at all. Faster work at the expense of safety, essentially.

Agreed. Although there are certain colonists I wouldn't want anywhere near a fight, so maybe you could toggle whether or not they respond to the bell?

Also, it would be handy if it auto-drafted anyone who was supposed to respond.

Hazard zones. Mark areas you don't want your colonists to enter.

Seconded (or fourthed, in this case) wholeheartedly. This would be a great way to earn money without being completely evil. Plus, I could finally get rid of all those stupid minstrels I keep capturing.

Another use for the art skill: have them put on shows for the colony to give everyone a mood boost. Have some kind of stage they can use to do it.

The more colonists involved and the better their skill, the more complex and interesting the performance is, and the greater the resulting buff for everyone in the audience. They performers could get a buff too depending on how well the show does. Bad performances cause a mood penalty for everyone involved.

Flashbangs. Grenades that momentarily stun anyone caught in the blast and give them a temporary accuracy penalty.