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I searched around a bit and saw a similar suggestion for a "circuit breaker" structure. Not quite what I had in mind, so I'll still post it.

What I suggest is a fuse. Because fuses are dead simple technology that the colonists could create without too much difficulty.

The way it works:
A fuse is like a normal power conduit except that when a short happens on one side of the fuse, batteries whose only power conduit paths to the short pass through fuses are not discharged, but the fuses are destroyed instead.

Balance considerations:
This does allow you to mitigate, depending on how many fuses you build, the negative impacts of shorts to a certain extent. Shorts can still happen on local segments, and after shorts, the fuses will be destroyed breaking your power infrastructure into multiple disjoint segments until a colonist gets to building another fuse, or at least some new conduit.



Example:
You have the following simple power setup
Two charged batteries B1 & B2, connected to turret T by power conduits '-'

B1--------------T--------------B2

In this scheme if B1 shorts, all of the energy from B2 will also be expended.

If however the mighty FUSE were used:

B1------F-----T--------------B2

When B1 shorts, B2 starts to short, but the sudden surge of current blows fuse F.

Leaving you with

B1------- ----T------------B2

The B1 to T connection is broken, but B2 can still power T because it did not lose its charge.

New building material (for walls only)
Compressed Earth Block (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_block)

Earth walls are one of the oldest, simplest building materials. There is dirt pretty much everywhere. Compress it and you have a strong, fireproof, cheap building material.

Could be produced at a hydraulic press. Faster to make than stone blocks and do not require chunks of stone (the colonist could animate digging for a moment perhaps to represent acquiring dirt?) they can be used to create fireproof walls that, alas, are also not as strong as stone walls.

tl;dr
Earth Block Walls
Produce earth blocks at hydraulic press
faster to make than stone blocks
weaker than stone blocks
fireproof

New joy structure:

Shooting range / (gun/archery) target.

Colonists can blow off some steam at the shooting range. Provides joy & training in shooing skill.

Just make sure your other colonists don't wander into the line of fire.
Also probably somewhat loud, so could wake up nearby sleeping colonists.

An alcohol still:

Converts potatoes to vodka
Raises happiness
Lowers productivity
(Future uses of alcohol could include liquid fuel for vehicles / molotov cocktails / backup generators / other industrial applications)

Got a pile of corpses? Need stuff done? The solution is here!

Convert the mostly dead bodies of your recently departed enemies (and allies) into horrible cyborg automatons. Here's how I envision them working:

You take a recently deceased person, and bring them to your surgery table. Implant them with advanced cybernetics that turn them into a single function (one skill) automatons. They will mindlessly perform their one task, whatever it is, with great efficiency, stopping only to periodically return to a drone maintenance bay to recharge and refill their nutrient paste dispensers.

The drones will have a negative impact on the psyche of colonists who spend time around them, especially if the drones were created from the bodies of friends / other colonists. This impact might diminish over time as colonists get more used to them. (I picture one challenge of their use being to design their workspaces such that colonists get minimum exposure to the drones while maximizing the amount of work they can get done. One way to aid this might be to be able to flag a door as impassible to drones to give players better control over where they can go.)

This would require research and/or the acquisition of advanced technology from traders or ruins as well as the construction of specialized facilities.

Other fun ideas might be making combat drones bad at friend/foe recognition making them more like a psychotic creature when activated (a combat mode on/off toggle could be available when a colonist is at a control station or similar letting you switch them from harmless warriors in waiting to crazed killing machines that obliterate anything that moves. They would make a great last line of defense, specialized trap, etc.)

Thoughts anyone?

Currently prioritizing construction seems to require (depending on how far along the construction is) more than one order to prioritize it for it to get finished.

For example, ordering a colonist to prioritize construction of a newly placed blueprint results in them carrying some metal to it and then wandering off, rather than completing the construction. They then have to be ordered to once more prioritize the construction before they will actually build it.

Perhaps implementing a priority queue of tasks for each colonist, which should probably be lower priority than eating/sleeping/firefighting (configurable?), but higher priority than tasks they have not been specifically been ordered to complete, would allow colonists to carry out prioritized orders even when interrupted or when their attention is temporarily required elsewhere.

unrelated suggestion:

A menu which lists all people currently on the map, their affiliation (colonist, neutral, raider/hostile) and the ability to jump to them. That way it is easier to find people who are walking through.