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Right now it is really easy to stockpile energy, food, etc. This is not good as it makes it too easy to turtle. I have thought up some ideas to make it harder:

1. Batteries lose their charge over time. In real life batteries lose their charge, why not in Rimworld? This would make it so that you couldn't just have rows and rows of batteries unconnected to the powergrid waiting for emergency, you would have to recharge them every once in awhile. This wouldn't remove the strategy of having back-up batteries, just make it less effective/easy. Additionally battery leakage could be made a thing, and different types of batteries could always be introduced with varying properties such as how much stored energy they lose, their chances of leaking, their internal resistance controlling potential power output, etc.

2. Preserving food. Berries can be made into jam. Meat can be smoked. Potatoes? I have no idea how to preserve potatoes without a freezer. Preserved food would provide less happiness/nourishment to colonists than fresh food. It would also require time to preserve the food. This way you don't have vast reserves of food piling up that never goes bad.

3. Weapons jamming. This isn't really related but I just thought of it. A weapon can randomly become jammed and needs cleaning to use. When a weapon becomes jammed it turns into a "jammed weapon" and your character automatically unequips it and in order to re-equip it must first be cleaned to turn it back into a "weapon". This could promote having more weapons lying around in case of a fight and you want to just grab another weapon as opposed to taking the time to clean your current weapon. Could also be used to help balance certain weapons where changing other weapon parameters wouldn't make sense.

Maybe the game is already set to never attack you with mechanoids during a solar flare, I just used dev mode to force mechanoids to attack me after I forced a solar flare.

[Water Sources:]

Ya, these suggestions are not going to go away until this game implements water, so I might as well mention my water ideas.

Water Sources:
Pond: Randomly dispersed around map, they are an accessible source of water that expands and shrinks within a finite boundary depending on the amount of water. Ponds spawn fish in them which can be selected for hunting. Colonists can either walk through ponds because they are shallow, and it just slows them down. Or you could try and make swimming a thing.
Aquifers: Located beneath the map is an aquifer. This water is less accessible, requiring wells to access, and electricity to pump up. Each well has a radius around it which it can pull water from. Aquifers have a finite amount of water and dry up, in order to replenish them rain is required. Different terrain types have different levels of absorbancy which determines the starting amount of water in the aquifer at that spot, as well as the rate at which the aquifer replenishes at that spot. So for instance, as the start of the game the spaces beneath the stone tiling would have no water, and would not replenish during rain due to the rain water unable to permeate through the stone tiles.
Underground Lakes: these are randomly dispersed through the map and are accessed the same way as aquifers. You don't know where an underground lake is unless you hit it by chance.

Needs
Colonists: have a thirst meter similar to the hunger meter. When a colonist is thirsty they will attempt to drink from their canteen. If their canteen is empty they will go to a water source and fill it up. Dehydration works like hunger, but is more critical. Drinking must be done more often, but is much quicker than eating.
Plants: Plants also have a thirst meter. Plants use up a small amount of water each day, as well as a significant amount of water each time they grow a stage. When their thirst meter gets too low they become wilted and die.

Structures
Pipes: transports water like power conduits transport electricity. Instead of connectivity they have water pressure.
Pump: place over an above ground water source, it transmits water to the pumps.
Well: taps into any below ground water source and transmits to pipes.
Sink: must be connected to pipe with a certain amount of water pressure. Colonists can refill canteens at sink.
Sprinklers: Like a production building with a built in finite ingredient search radius. Sprinklers have two options, water plants, and put out fires. Both options could be set to infinity as long as dehydrated plants and fire are in the radius around the sprinkler. That way, whenever a fire pops up a colonist who is a firefighter can walk over to the sprinkler and turn it on until all the fires within the radius are extinguished, same with a grower and dehydrated plants. Similar to how lights become dimmer when there is less power available to them(or am I imagining this?) the radius of the sprinkler could decrease as water pressure in the pipes attached to them decreases.
Aquaponics benches: these now require water.

Technologies
Directed sprinklers: instead of blasting water 360˚ around it, these sprinklers function more like a turret. Looking for a plant that needs watering or a fire that needs extinguishing, and then shoots water at that tile only, saving water.
Pervious concrete: special concrete made with few fine aggregates, allowing small channels and pores in the concrete to form and let water permeate through and recharge the aquifer below. When pervious concrete gets dirty though it losses its porosity. So if it becomes dirty it will absorb less rainwater unless a colonist cleans it.
Sonic exploration: allows colonists to see the location of underground lakes.

Pretty useful actually. To test just have a colonist throwing a molotov cocktail or shooting an inferno cannon at something, then have another colonist throwing frag grenades at the resulting fires. The frag grenades put out the fires in their explosion radius, making it a decent way to put out large fires if they aren't next to something important...

[Slave traders]

Slave traders
They attack like normal raiders, but they aren't after your loot. When a colonist collapses and needs rescuing, they will try capture your colonist before you get to them, and then retreat off the map. Having your colonists captured would be a blow to their happiness and fear.

Petty theft
Just like how kids used to steal the copper wiring out of the lights at my highschool, these petty thieves can do things like deconstruct your conduits and haul the metal away. Or grab silver just lying around outside under your trade beacon. They would come in small numbers, often only one, commonly at night time. Grab as much as they can haul before running away. This would make protecting your resources more vital, and provide a downside to building conduits to geothermal generators on the other side of the map.

Rats chewing on wires
Rats like to chew on wires and cause fires, it's annoying, it's even happened to my car. A random event, the boom rats will try to chew on and ignite random electrical equipment.

Animal attacks
Perhaps these could be explained with disease. The rats and squirrels can go rabid, and the muffalo can get Mad Cow's disease. A downside to this is that you couldn't eat them then, and I usually like to eat all the insane animals that attack my colony.

Powercutting
I have two ideas for this. One would be an EMP grenade that causes the same effect of a solar flare to everything within its radius. When these grenades explode things like turrets and powerdoors would shutdown for around a day if they are caught in its blast.

My second idea is if enemies knew to destroy the conduits leading up to your turrets and doors. The more primitive tribes wouldn't have this knowledge, but the experienced raiders would. This could give a much more "seige" feeling as you are hiding in your base and all of a sudden they cut the power from your solar panels/geothermal and all of a sudden all your power doors stop working and they start rushing in. It would make creating multiple conduit lines and having batteries more important.

[Sickness]

Sickness
Anemia
Anemia is a sickness caused by an iron deficiency that will lower happiness by a small amount, decrease walking speed by a small amount(3-5%).
Things that increase your colonists chance of becoming anemic include:
-not eating meat: this means that you aren't getting much iron in your diet as the berries and potatoes certainly aren't giving you enough. This can help prevent turtling and require people to go out and hunt.
-blood loss: punishes players more for being wounded, can't just sleep it off.
-being female: just an added bit of realism that can add a slight bit more depth

Scurvy
Caused by a vitamin C deficiency, scurvy slows down the healing process and causes general malaise and unhappiness. That which causes this would be not eating enough berries, and only living off potatoes and meat.

The nutritional deficiency diseases shouldn't be too much of a hassle, should be easy to cure, and shouldn't appear unless the player is really only getting food from one source. That way it can help prevent turtling and relying on a single staple, while not being too intrusive and bothersome to keep track of.

Contagious diseases
A lot could be suggested, such as sharing bedrooms could lead to diseases spreading more, as well as things like hauling corpses, eating rotten meat, blood on the floor. etc. But until more features of the game are known, such as whether or not water will be a thing and colony size, probably best not to go into much depth about these.

Cleaning
Make carpets harder to clean, but contribute more to improving the atmosphere. So in places such as in front of a butchers table it would be best to keep it as metal flooring or smooth stone.

I had an idea for your colonists to clean themselves. Objects could be made such as showers and jacuzzi(required to be on a steam geyser), these objects would routinely spawn an object like blood or dirt, but the object would be invisible and be called "body". That way you could tell your colonists to "Prioritize cleaning body", or a sink could produce an invisible object called "hands" and your colonists could "prioritize cleaning hands". Bonuses could include things such as increase to happiness due to feeling clean, or decrease in disease transmission.

Without Power
Give the player options to do things without electricity, so they aren't totally helpless during solar flare.
-Wood stove/campfire can be built inside/outside respectively and can be used to cook. They require wood be added to them.
-Torches can add lighting to the inside of the base, and require wood as well.
-Oil lamps: require some form of oil.

Within my cave base I made a bunch of single space floating metal walls in order to prevent a cavein. I built 3 hydroponics benches, but one of them wasn't receiving any power, even after I built a conduit moving up directly beside it. I ultimately determined that this is because the hydroponics bench was trying to get power from the single metal wall floating in the middle of my base, and was ignoring the conduit that I built right up next to it. I have had the same problem with 2 turrets which tried to receive power from a metal wall outside, and when I built conduits leading up to them they refused to get power from the conduits, and I instead had to built the conduits up to the metal wall which the turrets where trying to get power from.

Here is some more info. I am using the 413 Mac version. To reproduce just build an object requiring electricity next to a door, conduit, or metal wall that is not connected to anything. Then build a door/conduit/wall that is connected to electricity right up next to the object. The object will still be trying to get electricity from the original object that it tried to get electricity from even if that object can't supply it with electricity and even if it is next to a new object which can supply electricity.

Can you use mods with the Mac version of the game, or do I have to use Linux or the Windows version with Wine Bottler?