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I love this idea, but I picture it as a race against the clock sort of thing. I picture there being a large selection of differently shaped and sized tile space ships. All of the "walkable" areas, the whole ship, would be surrounded by several layers of tiles that represent "Hull Integrity". If you were crashing due to an uncharted asteroid field, the hull would start getting eaten away on one side from the outside. If you were crashing due to an internal high-heat fuel fire, the fire would start to eat it's way outside. Everything would be randomized, like the rest of the game, so you would not know how many people you will start with, where your cryo tubes will start you out, if they are all together, if they are near the escape pods, if the supplies and any weapons are near either of those, if you would be able to reach all of the supplies (some might be consumed by the fire, or an airlock door closed of an outlying part of the ship due to hull breach, so no food to take). Also, some of your colonists might die from cryo system failure, or be burned up before anyone even wakes up, or just take a lot longer to wake up. A certain number of your escape pods could be damaged, as well. The AI storyteller could eventually balance a higher number of escape pods with a smaller amount of food to grab to make it more challenging. One colonist (leader? Ship captain? Security Officer?) might wake up with a pistol, but any other weapons, all low level, would be in an arms room some distance away, possibly unreachable based on ship damage. The player could choose to launch any one pod at will but once the escape pod room has been breached, all pods would launch automatically with whatever is inside. I also feel it would be a good thing for challenging game play to spread escape pods over the map randomly, so you have to risk (future) wild predators, (future) sandstorms, etc. to rejoin your group.

Colonist got lost:
If a colonist goes beyond a certain (long) distance from the home zone and a certain (long) distance from other colonists, there could be a chance, (Like 1 in 10, augmented by intelligence/research skill?) of getting lost. He or she would just start to wander around that area aimlessly until another colonist is directed to retrieve him or her. They then walk together to within a certain distance of the home zone where they both go about their duties. This would be a good compounding event, if you are just starting out especially, because it divides your people. If you have3 or 4 people and 1 or 2 guns, a crazed muffalo or lone raider could cause some serious problems. Or if a raider party lands, you have to worry about them being seen by the raiders while trying to get back to base.

Intro modification:
In addition to the blurb about about waking from cryo and such, a second screen shows a display from your escape pod computer that you could scroll through. It gives you a few details about the moon you're on, nothing game changing for now, to keep it cheap, just a fun little thing to make the story feel deeper, and you could include some funny, random, or unexpected details/easter eggs in your lists of potential facts. Could include things like:
Name of gas giant (i.e. Omichron Persei, Hoben, Bat'leth)
Name of moon (Omichron Persei 8, Wash, Kapla)
Standard year for the planet (random number of days)
Distance from Star (giant random number of miles)
Class M (or you'd be dead)
First human visit X number of years ago
Terraformed X number of years ago
Nearest inhabitable planet (another name from a list of planets) and it's orbital distance.
Native flora and fauna (always dandelions, squirrels, and boomerats for now)
A little story about something in the planets history, such as:
The first settlers attempted to raise kangaroos for meat and fur but all of the females died in cryosleep. Settlers went mad and ate each other.
Or, Planet was originally terraformed to be the site of a SuperMax Prison for pirates and raiders, but was deemed too depressing. Or they all escaped due to a fire cause by boomerat mating season.
Or, Muffalo were originally introduced from Rigelius 9 in order to get rid of the Boomerat infestation on the planet. They then realized that all Muffalos do is eat poverty grass and go mad.

Nothing game changing, just something for the story.

Mass Graves:
Something like a 2 x 8 trench that holds large numbers of bodies, say double what the normal tile capacity would be, (or more actually since it strangely takes 2 tiles to bury a one tile person) so a 2 x 8 would hold 32, 2 bodies per tile, and cover over automatically when full.
Building dozens and dozens of graves for nameless droves of unfortunate raiders is a bit tedious, and poor use of space. Also, should have toggles for friend and foe, if you don't want your friends tossed in with the riff raff.
There is the cheap idea, and for the future, when all cheap ideas have been used up, it could cause very strong disgust and fear for colonists near it. Also, if wind ever exists in the game (rapidly spreading fires? wind turbine output? Walking speeds by direction?) the smell of an open death pit could dishearten anyone downwind.