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What would you as the colony commander be willing to pay to a raiding faction, and what would you expect in return? How would your payment alter the situation?

I'd chuck some silver or a dozen surplus wooden statues at them if my colony was still recovering from an infestation or mechanoid raid, or if everyone had malaria or something. I like this idea: A very punishing way to keep a colony on the brink alive.

You might want to look for a western mod. But for gameplay purposes nearly all of your requests are already filled.

We got a pistol for the revolver
We got the Survival rifle for the lever-action
We got something like 10 different drugs, and we don't really need another drug that just acts as "That drug but stronger"
Tables are Tables. Bartenders don't make sense in a communal society where you can just take as much beer as you want from the fridge and no one will stop you. See the Dwarf Fortress economy update to learn how that goes.
Horses for cargo are fulfilled by pack animals of all types including cows. If we get transportation to make pawn caravans faster, it'd going to be for more than animals when that update comes and will likely include trucks, sleds, carts, and possibly even assault vehicles.
Half Door? Just left click the door and select "hold open". My entire colony (sans refrigerator) uses stone interior doors because I see no reason not to have the doors open, and they can be closed during a raid.
Herd AI: Build an Allowed Animal Zone outside the colony where there's lots of grass. Now switch between the in-colony area and the outside area. Believe it or not the Cows (and chickens I think) will eat the grass outside for sustenance. No hay required! Just remember to switch the zone every couple days to let the grass grow back.

People who just can't fight are usually considered useless in my eyes...I always play on extreme so I kind of have to be very selective of who I choose to keep.

If they can't fight, create a 1x1 allowed area behind a wall next to a turret and prioritize repairs. There! Now they're totally capable of violence...indirectly...

If that doesn't work, give them a shield and tell them to stand behind a 1x3 wall on one of the corners and be bullet magnets. When the shield dies, they hide in the center of the wall. If the enemy has melee, deploy your own melee line behind her and have her lead the enemy to them.

I keep trying to look up the legality of "smokeleaf"...

If the biome permits, cotton works just fine as a cheap and disposable clothing material

You can actually also do double-wide wall sections and have colonists lean from each side of the openings in the walls.
sWWsWWsWWs

I should note you should punctuate your crenelations with 3-wide walls. This gives wounded pawns, melee pawns who don't have shields, pacifist pawns waiting to rescue/repair, and pawns with emergency rocket launchers a place to hide. This is especially important against mechanoids.

Carrier pigeons to keep in touch with friends and family. It could be like a long distance speech bubble.

The pigeons would be brought from the destination so that they fly home. They could be bought from caravans with home destination in the info tabs. And travelers might carry "call me" pigeons when out and about.

I like this idea. But before that I'm hoping for a realistic colony distribution. So more factions each with 1-10 colonies that are spawned in such a way as to suggest a contiguous territories.

This will likely be part of a follow up update on or two versions from now. The number, size, distribution, and design of the factions and their colonies is all in need of updates but none of those things are important enough to gameplay that they warrant focus in the short term.

Hopefully we will see more realistic npc colony designs, more factions and faction types in the world map, more realistic faction distributions of colonies around the world map (colonies of the same faction grouped together for example), and more inter-nod interaction in the future. But not now. Right now tynan is probably focused on balance and gameplay aspects that more immediately concerns the player.

I personally build turrets in all the major rooms now. They're incorporated into the walls and their uglyness is offset by a small statue or two. Bedrooms have emergency exits adjacent to the beds, and deadfall traps in 2-wide hallways (so colonists can go around) help keep the bugs back. I also have multiple exits to the base as a whole, emergency rations and a barracks outside, and a bunch of molotovs and inferno launchers ready so I can burn the bugs out. Shame about the furniture but the ability to do damage over time without keeping the door open is worth it.

Use your brains to counter and minimalize issue. We can't just nerf the bugs because living underground is already giving you the best flooring, immunity from sieges, and natural air conditioning. Nerfing the bugs at this point would just lead to everyone dismissing them as a minor pest/free food instead of a threat and suddenly we're back to Alpha 8 again. Also remember now that you can park 5 melee men behined a door and force the bugs to come through one at a time during the extermination phase.

I hope we can someday put them to use making explosives. Right now we just use metal but the idea of a very dangerous but profitable rocket/mortar farm is very appealing to me.

The idea of instructions is cool, but for vanilla game purposes we should keep it simple and not force Tynan to spend a month trying to code an entirely new aspect of the game. In this case, I recommend "Write book" as an artistic activity at a crafting spot or special workbench, and "Read book" as a joy activity where the colonist grabs the book from the stockpile, relaxes somewhere (In chair if available, recycling the same code that tell colonists to prioritize a table to eat at) and reads for joy.

The books themselves could share the art pool with the statues; alternating between random and historical events in the colony.

Agreed.

Perhaps:
Tropicare           nope, already a thing
Tropiclean          same
Tropiclear          gah!
Tropisafe?          not a thing! but doesn't really roll off the tongue.
Tropecure?        (Tropic + secure) also not a thing! although it sounds like cure, which it isn't.

Tropicana

Because oranges are healthy!

Just bring more fuel. Tank runs out of fuel, the Muffalo behind it gets relieved of a few jerry cans. If the caravan runs out of fuel, the convoy halts and the game tells you "Caravan 1 has run out of fuel".

You can then choose to abandon vehicles and walk home, then come back and get them later. Or maybe just attack without the armor support.

Unless Alpha 16 changed something, you should be able to see the aiming process by selecting the pawn (or enemy). The slowly shrinking cone in front of the gun represents the pawn aiming down the sights.