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My headcannon is that "invisibility" is more of a "dimensional half-shift".  You can still get hit by AOE and environmental effects, but are completely impervious to melee, are nearly invisible for the purposes of bullets, and can't be targeted by hostiles.

It's  not complete invincibility, it's not complete invisibility, and it's not complete ethereality.  It's a half and half mix of them all.

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An alternative headcannon is that it temporarily transports the target into a dimension that defies perception. 

1) I'm pretty sure melee skill matters even if you are wielding a ranged weapon.  The To-Hit calculation should be the same.  High quality ranged weapons make surprisingly good clubs, too.

2) Some enemies are safer to attack in melee (mostly blunt damage/single target) than ranged (mostly sharp damage/AOE).

3) [Mod]Simple Sidearms[/Mod] Why shouldn't snipers have a night or a cudgel on them?

Sequels require having survivors.  In my latest playthroughs, I've started to adopt the mentality that abandoning my tile is preferably to wipeout.  Doesn't work so well on sea ice, but most biomes are at least survivable even for Naked Brutality.

Easier said than done, ofc, greed still gets to me a lot!

I have to say, I'm pretty happy that I got to see the Biotech Mechanoids being as scary as depicted in the trailers.  All it took was a combination of self imposed challenges and some ludicrous research slowing mods to make the early game last long enough to be interesting.

Reserved for pictures.

We took what we could carry while the Diabolus burned our mansion - the work of years - around us.
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It didn't even have the decency to kill the Insects.  That's why we summoned it in the first place!
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At least we got to keep our precious research.
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Posting to Ludeon instead of reddit for the first time in... years?  Hopefully I'm less likely to find chatbots here 

[Log]
14.1
Bug hives showed up near by.  As did a thrumbo.  There's a very, very small chance we can solve both problems with one manhunter.

15.1
That went poorly.  I vastly underestimated infestations.  They spread fast, and the queens are tough.  In a last ditch effort, I'm summoning a Diabolus.

1.2
No sign of the Diabolus yet, aside from a kill signal.  Could be another day or two, depending on where in the system it's coming from.

The insects continue to expand.  They killed another militor breaking through the door.  Replaced the old spintered door with plasteel.  Hopefully it will last.

If this gambit doesn't work, we'll have to flee and start over elsewhere.

2.2
Diabolus has arrived, now to make sure he goes after the right target.
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Never mind.  From the sounds of it, he is already going after the insects.  Glorious blazing cannons!

3.2
We have been forcefully evicted from our home.  The Diabolus was too much for the hunting insects, and had no interest in hunting down the actual hives.  We managed to escape with precious few supplies, and our research.

We will rebuild stronger than before.  With a better exit strategy, too.
[/Log]

[Major Mods]
Better Infestations:  Makes the insects scarily smart, and allows hives to reproduce surprisingly quickly.  The way the insects split into defensive and offensive teams means hives are never defenseless, even if you try to bait the insects out.  Hit and run sometimes work, but is usually too risky.

Research Reinvented:  Research is far more precious than in Vanilla.  Unlocking tech isn't just a matter of sitting on a bench long enough.  You have to proactively find materials, craft prototypes, and - if you're lucky - reverse engineer existing items (including prototypes!).  I've never been this excited to *almost* have smithing unlocked before!

Research Reinvented Stepping Stones: Reorganizes the research tree to be more logical.  No more jumping steps in the research tree.

CAI 5000: Makes ordinary raiders smarter.  Increases the difficulty without needing to bloat raid sizes.  Also has a Fog Of War feature, but I eventually turned it off because there aren't enough QoL features to support it (such as cameras or listening posts).
[/Major Mods]

Will post pictures once I have that figured out.

Last time I checked, they exit the map on the side they are travelling to. So if you want them to exit east, send them to the world map one tile east of your base, then make your real caravan. A bit janky, but I think it'll work.

Last time I saw anyone check, it was semirandom, and only sometimes works like you say by coincidence.  I haven't checked the patch notes, though, so maybe it changed at some point.

You should be able to haul regardless of weight, as long as their is a valid hauling destination.  Make sure there is a hauling destination that permits human corpses regardless of being rotten, and make sure all haulers are zoned such that they can access said hauling zone. 

Make sure the pawns you want to haul are set to haul.

You should NOT be able to manually pick up corpses regardless of weight, as permanently making things part of your gear list relies on weight/volume limits.

If this is not the case, you have a bug to report, but most likely you messed up one of your zones somehow.

Are you running any mods because maybe that has something to do with it. I run a ton of them and I'm not seeing any difference in caravan loading times. In point of fact I'm here right now blowing off steam while my 6 pawns tasked with loading ONE muffalo with 300 pears are wandering around in a daze. I specifically had them load 300 of the same item (of 550 in stock) to try and keep them from doing exactly what their doing right now.

That sounds like a bug.  Were any of the pears eaten?  Do modded things like pears behave differently from unmodded things like pemmican?

You can work around this by marking the area as not being part of the home zone, but then they won't fight fires or clean at all.

You'd probably have to alter each faction mod to spend raid points in a balanced way, then add a mod that raises the raid point cap.

A simpler solution would be raising the raid point cap and turning on wealth independent mode.

Implementation: Armor, Implant, or Race.

Armor: You can take it on and off at will, though the equip time should probably take awhile.  Prevents wearing armor in the same slot.  Not sure how hard it would be to let armor heal limbs, or make armor heal itself.  Maybe the armor would need to be invincible?

Implant:  You can't add or remove it except through surgery/events.  Does not prevent wearing armor in addition to the implant, though maybe armor could add a -100 mood debuff.  If you made it similar to the psionic 'implant' from worshipping anima trees, it shouldn't trigger bionic related moods.

Trait:  Can't be added or removed outside events.  I'm not sure what you can do with traits alone, but you could probably combine a trait with an implant.

Race:  Can't be added or removed, though race might be changeable via event.  Not sure.  Can make apparel specific to that race, and prevent normal apparel from being worn.


Balance:

Higher food costs would be a big one, along with adding bloodlust/cannibal traits/needs.  Chocolate should probably fulfill the 'violence/cannibal' need, that would give a purpose to farming cocoa.  If need isn't met, go crazy as per luci.

Bonuses should probably focus on combat and healing instead of crafting.  Symbiotes should be special pawns, not the backbone of your sweatshop.  Good abilities would include a short range jump, an "entangle" ability equivalent to the stun/burden psycast, and stronger melee.

There's a mod to turn sarcophogi into tables, but no, I haven't heard of one that turns them into beds.  Since burial spots are 'assigned' to colonists in a similar manner to beds, it might be hard to give them bed functionality.

Some Vampire mods add Coffins, which are vampire specific beds that CANNOT be used as burial spots.

There are a few possibilities.  First is the 'obvious' troubleshooting:

Were the cats assigned to the right zone? 
Did you reassign them to the right zone AFTER making changes to their zone?
Were the cats fleeing or otherwise pushed out of their zone?

Now for the 'advanced' troubleshooting:
Was the animal walking from 'inside the zone' to another spot 'inside the zone'?  Pawns can path outside their zone as long as their destination is also inside their zone, EVEN IF the path inbetween is outside their zone!  You can usually prevent this by making the entire zone a single square with no corners.

Were the doors leading outside forbidden?  IDK if animals respect this, but colonists should.

Lastly, when in doubt, you can prevent pathing by building a solid wall in front of any door you don't want used.

The "Empire" mod combined with the "Rim War" mod achieves this effect.

Empire lets you build 'vassal' settlements that you can defend and tax.

Rim War lets factions fight eachother, potentially to extinction.

I don't know of anything that adds hand crafted capital cities, but there are a few mods that turn faction settlements into proper cities.  That said, it is extremely difficult to design a city that can withstand a raid from a late game player owned colony.  Even if we discount Neuroquake, mortar barrages, doomsdays, trigger happy shooting specialists, and targeted drop pods behind enemy lines, that still leaves the option of putting a mix of masterwork SMGs, sniper rifles, and power armor on 50+ colonists and walking in the front door.