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I have not played in a while so excuse me if this has changed in the last versions of the game : 

The combat system is the most lacking part for me. 

Leave a melee pawn alone in a combat situation ? It will let itself die 2 cells from attackers it could have exterminated. 

AI has 100 % knowledge of the situation, so it is impossible to create ambushes. 
I have tried several times to take 2 or 3 skilled pawns and make them circle a mountain in order to attack the raiders from their rear. Nope, does not work, they move into new positions way before they could naturally see that I am doing a maneuver. 

ranged combat feels a lot like placing your pawns as best as you can and then wait for them to roll dices. 
It create some stories from the random injuries they get but it feels very static.

yes for 6 months

Seriously?

yes, it is all in the blog posts. He started vacation September 1, for 6 months.

I had to search a bit to find it but sure enough : 

[/quote]
So I think Alpha 12 will be an important update, but it will take some time. It might not be finished before the end of August, in which case it'll have to wait until 2016 (since I'm taking a break starting in September). I considered just releasing what we have but I really don't want to release animal husbandry in a half-done state. I want you to experience the glory of it all at once.
[/quote]

from  : 
https://ludeon.com/blog/2015/07/quick-update-upcoming-developments/

@tynan : It would probably be a good idea to post a post on your devblog about this break.

1. As a general rule I don't make promises that I'm not quite sure I can keep. That includes pretty much any promise about future developments for a game that extend beyond a few weeks. Game development is just like that. You can't really predict it. So if I said something about the long-term future of RimWorld, it would just be a guess, and there's no value in me giving out my guesses and pretending they're anything else. So I'm sorry I can't give long-term projections. There are just too many variables.

Maybe you think it's annoying, sorry about that. I, however, wish to be able to say, in a few years, that I've never broken a promise.

I do find it annoying. I understand that you don't want to make promises that you will not be able to keep, especially after disasters like DF-9. On that topic, to be fair, even though they did not make hard promises on their 'future development plans' page, they should have added a big blinking warning that these plans were subject to change AND cancellation depending on the project success. 
The issue I see with this is that I have no idea whether a weak part of the game is here because it is a placeholder or work in progress or whether you consider it finished. I have no problems with weak or broken game mechanics in an alpha, that's the principle after all. However, not knowing whether you consider these satisfying/final makes these weak point frustrating.
I think it is possible to find a balance between 'no promise of any kind so I can't be held accountable for anything' or promise that you will add twice the depth of Dwarf Fortress in the next update. Simply giving stating what will be the focus of the next releases at this point while explaining that it can change at any moment would be great.

In early games, one or two snipers are enough to disrupt a siege. 
Use the terrain to your advantage and either snipe closest enemies or if you can destroy the mortars. 
Soon the raiders will give up on the siege and try to assault your colony. From here on, you only have a weakened raid to face. 
For later sieges, I employ variants of this strategy, but I need way more striking power in order to disrupt the siege and enemies snipers become a real problem (especially since even enemies with very low stats can still often score headshots against my snipers).

Can we hope for some improvements to trading outside of the interface ? 
The trade beacon system is becoming more and more cumbersome now that we have perishable goods.

I think the trading could be done with a bit like it's done in Towns:
You have beacons to mark your stuff to sell, but they can be inside too. But if you trade, your haulers will haul the traded goods to a launchpad. You'll get your traded goods when the according value is launched.
But this would require a bigger change in the code for the trader and for the AI.

I did not know of Towns trade system but this is what I had in mind. Additionally, trade caravans from the neighboring villages would make more sense than space vessels. That would also open more possibilities : 
-Your relations with the other towns can influences  trading prices.
-A random event where traders approach your town only to have you realize that they just want to launch a surprise raid on your colony. 
-The possibility for you to attack a trade caravan : it is heavily guarded and will mean war with its village but you can do it if you think it is in your interest ...

I realize that even just the basic system would be a lot of work though, but I think it would be worth it.

Can we hope for some improvements to trading outside of the interface ? 
The trade beacon system is becoming more and more cumbersome now that we have perishable goods.

Doors positioned horizontally look good, but verically positioned doors look like a simple rotation of the same asset. 
They don't blend at all with the walls and look like a completely different projection. 
Would it be possible to improve this ? 

example :

yes please, we need a way to manage meds without having to autorize / forbit the pile each two minutes.

The one I'm pleased about is...
Added command to make trade beacon automatically generate a matching stockpile

Woot!

Same here. Thought about suggesting it again, but pow, here it is. Beer brewing was a nice surprise as well, though

I hope that this system is a placeholder though, having to move goods from a stockpile to another in order to sell them is clunky and cumbersome.

I sort of agree. I don't mind a dedicated stockpile but as I put in another thread somewhere I'd like the option to tag objects and stacks as trade goods and have them automatically taken to the trade stockpile as a haul job (needs a goods hauling priority liust to work well).

That would help, but IMO that would only be a band aid. 
Why do we have to move goods to a specific stockpile in order to sell them ?  Is that what I want to do ? Not really, I want to trade an item (either to get some shiny silver or in exchange for another one). 
Right now, I have to jump through some pretty convoluted indirect hoops in order to do that. Ok, games don't have to implement the shortest UX path (one click = win would after all be pretty boring), but in this case I don't see how the current system is fun, it is just cumbersome.
I can guess that it is a difficult thing to implement and that right now this beacon system is the best placeholder Tynan could come up with (or at least I hope it is a placeholder). Especially since trade vessels don't make too much sense on a Rimworld. I suspect that Tynan would like/will introduce trade caravans later on, that would be grand ! 

The one I'm pleased about is...
Added command to make trade beacon automatically generate a matching stockpile

Woot!

Same here. Thought about suggesting it again, but pow, here it is. Beer brewing was a nice surprise as well, though

I hope that this system is a placeholder though, having to move goods from a stockpile to another in order to sell them is clunky and cumbersome.

The graphics are deliberately abstracted. This helps story generation because it allows your brain to create the images instead of trying to make the game do it. Your brain can imagine much better than any software system.

That, and I'd much rather put more effort into simulating interesting events rather than making more detailed pixels to express the simple events we already have. Lots of games have detailed graphics; almost no games have detailed simulation.

So yeah, the current graphics are final.

You could mod them to be more detailed if you wished, but I think you'd just be walking into a trap and making the game (paradoxically) less engaging.

For me, the problem isn't that the graphic are abstracted. It does indeed seems like a good choice for this kind of game. 
My problem is that for games that last more than a year, all my characters start to look identical. They all start to wear the same armor and helmets (with a few differences). Yeah, the color varies a little bit, so does the pawns builds, but not that much. 
At the start of a game, each colonist is identifiable at a glance. After a year, I need to look at their names in order to quickly id them.

I think that there are solutions to this problem though.
The first would be to let colonist store armors and weapons in a locker when they are safe. Another would be to add more variety in their equipment.

I spent two years in a Boreal Forest biome. 
Diseases have been fine.   
Infections have been an issue but nothing unnatural, just the normal random consequence of deep injuries.
The only real issue I have with health system is that I have no way to manage medicine stocks/priorities. 
I would love to have a way to do things like reserve the more potent medicine for serious injuries and leave herbal medicines for small injuries (and/or prisoners). 
Right now I do this by hand and it means A LOT of micro-gestion.

some additional thoughts : 
-I would like to be able to only give herbal medicine to my prisoners without having to forbid the medicine stacks manually. Similarly, I would like to be able to only use this potent medicine for heavy injuries and not just scratches. 
-A way to reserve some crafting operations to the skilled crafter, but it looks like it is already headed our way.
-Hauling is a pain. Out of ten colonists, two of them have hauling as their main priority and even then they are overwhelmed by the number of thing to move. Additionally, the preference algorithm does not help, often favoring moving goods between stockpiles.
-colonists are very dumb while it comes to what to eat. If there are no cooked meals available, they always eat raw potatoes while there are also plenty of berries in the same stockpile. I guess they just take the nearest available food source in that situation. They will traverse the map in order to get to that military ration but they can't be bothered to bring the other 9 with them.


new features :
-Terraforming node : similar to fertility pump, this allows you to transform a bit of terrain around the node. It requires a lot of power and takes months but it allows you to gradually change the terrain to your liking. 
Also, waterbodies could be very hard to traverse (5% of mobility ?) and it is possible to build bridges. Bailey bridges might also be a good idea in that situation : they allow to prevent bodies of water from becoming overpowered and give a tactical focus during battles.
-a roadmap of the soon to be implemented features and system that are destined to be overhauled would be cool. I can understand if Tynan does not want to publish it in order to do not have to deal with infertile debates each time he needs to change his plans though.

when hovering the mouse over an interior object like an hydroponic table or a support column (1 by 1 wall surrounded by an interior room), the temperature display shows the outside temperature.

steps :
-order one of your colonists to start a communication (in my case, I wanted to start a trade)
-start drawing a selection rectangle, don't release the mouse button
-when the communication start, you cursor will be stuck in rectangle selection mode behind the trade window.