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Not a massive fan of starting on a space station, but the idea of being able to launch satellites would be a nice addition. Peeeerhaps a space station much later on.

The satellites would require some sort of launch pad and a lot of resources in the late-game but they would be able to increase your comm range, and give you advanced warning of raiders and solar flares as well as "other things".

Exo-scientists:
A group of scientists from an advanced race beam down and examine you for a nature documentary they're making. (They just mill around for a while and then leave)
It splits the colonists into two camps, 1 feel like superstars in the limelight and the other feel like apes in cages.
Happiness is obviously the major effect here.

Tourism:
Similar to the one above, tourists come to visit your colony and it causes polar happiness effects in your colonists as well as a small increase in your $ reserves.
Tourists come complete with flowery shorts and cameras equipped in weapon slots.

Ghosts/spirits:
Ghosts or spirits begin flashing in and out randomly in your colony for X-days.
They flicker lights on and off, play with power reserves by making batteries empty and fill, and periodically make security turrets fire for no reason.
Decreases happiness and increases fear greatly if seen by colonists.

Perhaps higher chance of happening if there have been many deaths recently?

Trade Embargo:
Due to some interstellar war or deplomacy that your colonists know nothing about, no trade ships can enter your sector for the next X-number of days.

General Trade effects:
"Due to the 'Gluttonites' of the planet 'Obeseite IV' the universe is experiencing a food shortage, prices have consiquently risen."
or "Thanks to the Empire beginning a project they call "It's totally a moon... we promise..." there is now a shortage of metal, prices have risen."
You get the idea...

Disease:
I know this has been suggested a lot... but seriously... Disease. Do it. You know you want to...
Several types/stages of disease would be nice:
a) Increases tiredness of colonists.
b) Generally makes colonists work and move slower.
c) Begins to injure colonists and they require medical help
d) Incapacitates colonists
e) Death (perhaps a very rare zombifying disease that reanimates after X-days?)

Drums in the deep:
"Your colonists delved too greedily and too deep..."
Either it awakes some kind of singular boss style alien creature (Balrog...) which will begin to wreck your colony, or it unleashes a hoard of smaller alien critters.7
Higher chance of happening if you have a large underground area, and even higher chance if you have recently been mining.

Refugees:
We already get singular refugees walking about, but this event would see a ship contact you requesting asylum on your colony for X-days.
During this time you would be under a much higher % chance for raids.
Declining would reduce colony happiness as we "left them to die" but accepting would mean providing them beds and food despite them not actively helping the colony...
Decisions... Decisions...

Solar Activity:
I believe somebody already mentioned this but it would be nice to segment the solar activity into several types:
1) Increased solar activity for more power generated
2) Decreased solar activity (eclipse) for no power
3) Solar Flare, disables electronics for a short time
4) Coronal mass ejection, Disables electronics and deals damage to people who are outside for short time.

Religious/Political strife:
Not sure if this is really a good direction to go in, but having political or religious zealots attempt to convert your colony.
Accepting the conversion would have short term happiness effects as nobody likes change as well as some noticable long term effects in the types of raids and prices from traders.
Declining would lead to a one time large raid, with perhaps an increased % of small raids from this faction in the future.

Weather:
Heavy rainfall causes slight depression and lower external crop yields, also lower solar power output.
Drought causes major reduction in external crop yields and slight depression.
Dust storms cause moderate depression and damage any components or people who are outside.
Hurricane/tornado cause major crop damage, major colony damage and large happiness drop.

Technically not weather but in a similar catagory:
Geothermal activity increase, increased power from geothermal plants with a small % chance of them taking damage/exploding.
moonquake, causes minor structure damage and caveins.

I think that's about all I can think of for now...

I'm greatly in favour of a multi-level research system with an asymptotic limit.

I.e. the major areas of research be listed as seperate catagories:
Mining
Farming
Construction
Social
etc..

And these catagories can be researched indefinitely but each research taking exponentially longer with exponentally falling returns for said research.
This means that even in the late-game you can still progress with researching even if it only gives you 0.01% faster mining every 10 days or something silly...

Interspaced in the main catagories would be sub-catagories which are unlocked when one (or more) of 3 things happen:

1) The correct "level" of research is attained:
e.g. lvl 2 farming unlocks the ability to research Hydroponics for example

2) An artifact is found/bought/captured or something is learned by "interrogating" a prisoner, and this can create a "breakthrough" allowing you to progress with research without the required background level.
e.g. An advanced alien race attacks and you capture a pulse rifle, allowing you to begin researching how to make it, at a much slower rate.

3) Random events:
Random breakthroughs and random technologies that can only be accessed through this method could happen when the AI director sees fit to add them.
These could be "story" elements which allow you access to the next stage of gameplay (whatever that may be)
Or they could just be interesting and useful items that will not break the game eitherway.

Also, I'd like research to have a significant chance at failing as this is often the case IRL, Right now Research is far too fast and it needs to be a much slower and more fluid process.
I.e. your researcher could be trying to research better mining picks, but fails and instead he has a minor breakthrough in materials science which adds a little bit of progress to your "construction" catagory.

Finally, I'd like to have research and manufacture seperated if possible...
The idea being that research is sort of just the raw theory behind something, allowing new ideas to be brought forward and unlocking old ideas that your citizens have seen elsewhere (from other species for example)
But the ability to actually put that into practice would be somewhat limited by your manufacturing technolgy.

I.e.
You capture some alien with the pulse rifle and unlock the research, after a long 10 day research project you finally finish and are able "In theory" to reproduce the weapon, however your manufacturing technology is not capable of producing such an advanced item.
We may understand something in theory but it doesn't mean that we're actually physically capable of producing the object.


That's just my view of a semi-perfect research tree... and I fully understand that it's a very complicated web of interlocked nests in order to get such a system working, but I thought i'd just explain it here anyway.

On/off toggle for lamps so we can save power in areas of our colony that are not in direct use.

I know this has already been suggested, but I'd like to see more power generators first, before anything too fancy.
A nuclear reactor to make use of the Uranium item already ingame would be perfect.


On the more fancy and outlandish side of things:
I'd also like to see some sort of computer complex, "Main computer" or "AI base controller" however you want to phrase it.
Basically it would be a building that would let you set generic settings for your base e.g:

"Lock all doors"       Toggle on/off
Useful to stop escape attempts or perhaps to trap incoming raiders in specially designed chokepoints without having to let them smash their way in.

"Lights"                  Toggle on/off (with option to have them turn off only when room is empty)
Would be mostly aesthetic (or to find out which of your colonists suffer from epilepsy) but having an option to have the computer only have lights on in rooms that are being used would save on power.

"Defenses"             Toggle on/off
Would no longer be able to double click and select all turrets manually, instead you either have to turn them on/off using a colonist or install this main computer to control them all simultaniously, adds a degree of difficulty in early game.

I'm sure we could think of other uses for a central computer and it would be a nice RP room for the base to have as well, perhaps you could put your comms console in there and have a sort of command room.

Currently our colonists are able to hold guns and grenades, but wouldn't it be nice if there was a selection of items for them to use as well?

E.g. Fire extinguishers and medpacks
or specialized tools such as picks and wrenches which aid in construction and mining jobs.

This way we'll have our colonists more specialized and it gives a bunch of items which can be produced ingame or bought/sold with traders.

Also, if we were to only allow colonists to hold 1 item, it would make the placing and usage of a barracks a key component of your colony design.
Do you have more of your colony equipped with weapons and have them be less efficient at the their jobs?
Or do you equip specialists with tools of their trade and just hope that you can arm them in time to defend against an attack?

It gives plenty of choice on how you set up your colony and I'm sure that people can think of many more items than the simple number that I suggested here.

Any comments?

Yeah I've been waiting for a better power source, right now my main game has a huge colony (26 colonists and growing...) and keeping all of them fed and happy requires a lot of power.

Best I can manage is a solar array nearby my bunker and a LOT of batteries inside the bunker in case of raid/eclipse.

The reactors should require a well balanced amount of Uranium, In late-game the traders seem to give about 100-120 per ship and I'd say it's probably 4-5 days between industrial ships on average so the reactors would probably want to be using up 1 Uranium every hour.
This way you can't really run them continually as you'll run out (just) before the new shipment arrives, but it's enough to have the base run on purely reactors for a while if you stockpile.

Allowing you to lockdown your bunker in response to a particularily strong raid or a prolonged series of bad events.
But not allowing you to simply spam reactors and hydroponics inside your base and lock yourself indoors Fallout style.