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A good tie-in with an overhaul of the caravan system would be vehicles.

The simplest would be a wooden cart or wheelbarrow that you could build (pulled by humans or animals) that could be taken to the next map over for quick resource gathering missions.  The more complex would be vehicles powered by chemfuel or some kind of strange mechanoid contraptions that could travel long distances.

Fits in well with the wild west theme and I think it would make combat more dynamic as well.

Being able to mount sufficiently tamed animals and control them like a vehicle during combat would be pretty great (and in the western spirit, too!)

The idea is I'd train a muffalo to accept battle commands, then mount it during a raid and order it to charge the enemy line.  Being able to fire a weapon while mounted (with a penalty to aim) would be just awesome.  Imagine having a whole cavalry of colonists charge a raid this way?  Suddenly aggressive counter-attacks are appealing instead of the usual defensive "hunker down" strategies.

Should work well with caravans, too.

Issue still present in 0.18.1704 as well.

Same here, running Gentoo.  Not only is zooming slow, but the zoom directions are reversed too.