Messages

I think the fact that gun fights make up a very large chunk of the action currently means that if firefights are "realistic" in often resulting in permanent injury, it too often leads to defeat or long term suffering. Hopefully we end up seeing a large range of dangers in the game to make gun fights more tense and special, instead of an everyday occurance.
Other potential sources of violent drama -
I'd like to see buildings collapsing in storms/fires
Mining cave ins/minor injuries from falling rocks and bumped heads
Roving predatory animals, even large ones that could break through a wooden wall. The wild boars should already be quite dangerous to colonists if they decide to fight back.
Fallen tree or logging accident

I'd like people to stop shooting like they're short sighted when the enemy is only 20m away. Understandable that gun fights have to have a little inaccuracy to them because they would be over too fast, but firing a pistol over and over and not hitting a guy 20m away is just stupid. Giving weapons more realistic accuracy would give better tactics, ie riflemen wouldn't want to get close to pistols because the pistols shoot faster with the same accuracy of a rifle up close, whereas the rifle is accurate at long distance and out ranges pistols.

Drones will be better if/when there is a way to order Colonists to stop working for a mood boost. Whether it's for leisure time, or psychiatrist or something, it is needed.

I hope hunters will go up and melee animals that are injured, instead of standing at max range taking potshots at a creature for two days

On the flipside of that ^ I wish it would remember the last material you wanted, instead of constantly popping up the material list.

So first time you click Door, the material menu comes up. Select wood, then left click from then on the Door icon will auto-ready a wooden door. To change the material you would then right click the Door icon and choose a new material. Would make building things repeatedly much easier.

But who'll psyche the psychologists?

Hello Red Mars.

Would have thought that hoppers indeed already set a precedent for this type of behaviour.

+1 to hoping we get a lot of "low tech" buildings and things for the players early game. Then players who wish to can continue to use those things if they want a primitive playstyle. Again, the idea of items and concepts that can be used both as part of normal gameplay pacing/expansion/growth as well as for players who just like the style.

I don't see plants requiring water in this way to be a necessity for the game, if it's a PITA like Tynan says. I think the generic "it rains sometimes" is more than enough of an environmental effect to show the player "yes water falls from the sky and the plants grow here"

Though naturally plants in unsuitable climates shouldn't be able to grow. So no potatoes in the desert, unless you have a water pump or something or you grow them indoors.

+1 for FoW

Would give you things like colonists on sentry/patrol mode, watchtowers, rudamentry motion detectors, sensor towers for proper vision, satellite launch for full time vision.

Hey that's a clever idea! And they could farm seaweed/algae in the shallows!

Perhaps some behaviour for raiders, they try to grab fallen weapons when they retreat?

Could you not just make it part of Hunting? Then allow the player to set ocean-edge tiles to be hunted, or something?

How do you make your expert shooter only hunt, and your expert fisher only fish?

Uhhhh, make a fishing rod "melee" weapon, ie requires them to stand adjacent to the water? 

I don't know about DRAG if they're just iguanas or beetles!

Ooh, Tynan can we get BLOATED corpses please? As a stage of decomposition, where they're REALLY hideous

I'd really love to see human bodies able to be used for nutrient paste without cannibalism. Makes more sense to me that colonists would be comfortable with completely-recombined-food-molecule-paste instead of starving. Though I guess you'd have to balance out the nutrient paste somehow because you'd be set for food after raids quite well.

Why not being able to plant fruit trees on top of graves, thus using bodies to fertilise the soil! That's a concept I've encountered in at least one sci-fi settler-themed story. The player could also choose flowers instead for the graves of beloved colonists.

Could you not just make it part of Hunting? Then allow the player to set ocean-edge tiles to be hunted, or something?

Rendering pawn with lost limbs or rendering all wounds at their exact locations on body wouldn't be trivial I'm afraid. I think that 1 bullet hole will have to stay in A7.

I could see a "bandaged head" for generic head wounds, or even permanent "eyepatch", might be major indicators that add to the game a great deal without being too complex maybe.