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Allow colonists to force prisoners into bed in order to provide them with medical treatment. Currently, they seem to only be able to heal prisoners when the prisoners aren't 'active', which is currently the number one cause of death for the interned.

Yeah, walls do appear to be perfect insulators. I recently had a huge fire in the hydroponics room, which was built into the mountain. Because the heat could only escape through one of two doors, it ended up heating the room up to nearly 1000 degrees Celsius, killing two thirds of my colony stuck in there, and completely melting everything. The neighbouring room got up to 500 C, and the neighbouring rooms of THAT room only 200 C. I think that perhaps walls should leak at least some heat.

Hypothesis: Players playing with small colonies, while exercising care with which pawns to convert to their cause, are more upset about this update due to the fact that a colonist can get permanently impaired by a single hit. The event is rare but pawns receive a number of hits that guarantees permanent impairment sooner rather than later, with no cure. Players playing with large colonies suffer little from a loss of a colonist, much less permanent disability.

Rant: Tynan & co. are visibly taking the game into Dwarf Fortress's direction. This, in a way and in my opinion, goes against the original mission of RimWorld. The vibe from Tynan has always been that he wanted his players to go with small colonies, in which every character is important. On the other hand, while I myself always play with small colonies, I have supported the idea of having support for the management of large colonies, so does that diminish my right to criticize this direction? On the other hand, Tynan attributed Dwarf Fortress as its influence since day 1, but to me it was always a marketing gimmick, and not to be taken seriously. But then Tynan seriously went dwarffortress with RimWorld. Therein lies the contradiction - were we expected to play with small colonies or is this Dwarf Fortress in space. Incidentally, I play DF with small crews as well. And I avoid combat like plague. I utilize traps, defenses and suicidal engineering. But I know for a fact that some (the majority of?) players have dozens, hundreds of dorfs in their fortresses.

The questions: How do we, as players of RimWorld, are divided with our playstyle? What portion of us plays with small (less than 12) colonists, in which case permanent impairment is a major setback, and what portion of us collects colonists like pokemon, with the 'gotta catch them all' approach, in which case they are shielded against the effects of occasional dismemberment? I have a hunch that the divide over Alpha 6 correlates with each one's playstyle in this regard.

Further rant: Another difference with RimWorld and DF is that DF is heavily melee-oriented, while RimWorld is for gunslingers. There's a massive difference between melee and ranged, and you can't just make ranged combat as brutal in RimWorld as melee is in DF, and expect proper level of brutality as a result. No, the road to balanced brutality is different and you have to be more careful. Guns are dangerous.

I suspect that there might be a further divide, largely over whether or not players treat rimworld as a city builder or not. Given the major interest that some have portrayed for phoebe friendly, and the whole name change to specifically reference building, it seems that there is a minority of people who are interested in the base building aspect, and not the often violent, ai storytelling that forms the core of the game. As such, an update that focuses on violence would probably upset the balance for these people.

Another issue, is that the core gameplay has remained unchanged for long enough that some people may have ended up lulled into a sense of complacency, wherein they believe that what the current game is, embodies what the finished product will be.

A third issue, is that when a game offers substantial abstraction, it often sidesteps criticisms of realism, etc that a more simulationist approach cannot avoid. Few people complained about colonists soaking up a couple dozen bullets at a time  before alpha 6, but all of a sudden once detailed wounds and medical systems are added, people are pointing out the problems of getting shot by a half dozen bullets, and then healing up fine. Whether or not this is a problem is not the issue, but that more detailed simulation almost always invites criticism, largely because there is actually something specific to target.

All that said, as others have stated, I think this has been one of the best updates thus far.

this has been a great addition. I especially like the way the medicine skill interacts with wounds. The number of badly sutured livers in my colony is hilarious.

Yeah, the collapse rate of the post-battle body-hauling phase gets pretty over the top, especially on the higher end, when battles take longer, and there are way more enemies.

What was the rational for removing fear and loyalty, does anyone know? Presumably there's something in the works, but I felt it worked pretty well.

You can do this already if you click into the Config button of a bill, hit the "Do X times", then change it to "Do until you have X". Hope this helps!

Thanks, I totally forgot about how to access it.

Setting a minimum amount for bills, so that if a stockpile dips below that amount, more will be made up to the minimum. Ie, if the a min amount of simple meals is 10, then whenever there are fewer than 10 meals in the stockpile, a chef will cook more until there are 10 in the stockpile again.

Yeah. The fact that there are three 'classic' storytellers, differentiated only by difficulty doesn't help in that matter though. To be honest, i've never played phoebe, also because it sounded too boring.

With the inclusion of apparel and gear in alpha 5, it'd be possible to add a spacesuit for colonists. Having some sort of airlock functionality would be pretty important, and possibly the toughest part, interrupting colonist jobs to put on/take off a spacesuit. Some other things might need to be changed as well. Tribal groups might need to be cut out, maybe some building materials aren't air tight, like stone brick? Once landing site choices are in, it'd be a shoe in as one of the choices.

Yeah, the problem with the day event (as opposed to the crashed ship) is that there isn't really anything to do once it happens. You can prepare, and if you're lucky it won't happen when you have a bunch of bodies lying around, but that's about it. (I feel the crashed ship is mostly fine as is. It offers a very 'At the Mountains of Madness' type climax)

As solutions, there's the one Ty mentioned of making it only randomly affect some colonists, but I feel an additional improvement of giving a variable chance for broken colonists to 'recover' is needed. If someone gives up, and decides to leave, well...only a prison can cure that ailment! But dazed and rampaging people having the possibility of recovering would greatly reduce the 'total wipe' issue with drones, while still keeping a very substantial threat.

The other solution (leisure economy) is probably a good one to include as well, and while the above solution reduces the lethality of the event, a leisure economy strengthens the survivability of the colonists positively. If 'leisure' were added as a 'need' (along with sleep and food), then the primary killer of drone events (-25 happiness being stacked with cramped, ugly environments or bodies) can be managed a bit. Right now, the colonists don't 'know' that they are in danger of breaking. Whereas two of the other three main sources of unhappiness, (food, sleep) are self regulated, with colonists stopping work and going to eat or sleep when they are hungry or tired. The third source (corpses) can be either avoided or hauled, so are still an issue you can do something about. Not so drone events.