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Or when the whole colony's burning all around, most of the other colonists are incapped but the one in perfect health refuses put out the fire and starts eating on a burning table.
He died by the way, I executed him. Gotta love playing god. (｡◕‿‿◕｡)

Ah, but you could have forced him to fight the fire by drafting him and sending him near it... poor colonist, he didn't have to die

I'm not sure if a mood boost would suffice, though. The colony usually lies in ruin after a big raid and most colonists have the ugly environment, hungry, tired, seen somebody die, wounded, shared bedroom debuffs (more in bad situations) would make some of the colonists immediately break anyway before things can be fixed, while the ones not taking the brunt of the battle would be really happy... hmm, the second part actually sounds good. Perhaps apart from disallowing the mood to go below a certain treshold, colonists should also get the happy thoughts you mentioned, with a flawless victory giving greater boost than one where you lose a colonist?

Well, turrets are mostly pointless because they raise the strength of enemy raids, so unless you plan on using them as impromptu blasting charges, avoid them. Get all your colonists' shooting skill at least to level 10, the computer doesn't care about what skill your colonists are when computing the raid strength. Micromanage your pawns during battles, move them around, make use of the fact that you are a thinking human against (relatively) dumb AI algorithms - this means that you have to use friendly fire to your advantage, the tribals are especially vulnerable to slaughtering their own.

However, the most important advice is: When you see you can't handle the fight, RUN. The raiders will eventually get bored of gutting your colony and leave. This will mean a lot of rebuilding, but you can always rebuild. Replacing dead colonists is worse, especially when they are godlike cooks or something to that effect.

Say that after you encountered so many no firepower was enough to stop them "meat shields". ^^

A ship part crashed right next to my granary just a while ago (and set it on fire :/ ). I thought I was dead when it released fourty scythers and fifty-something centis, it turned out rather fine because the scythers rushed ahead, got killed and then it became a slapstick comedy as the centipedes chased around my colonists around but never caught them (I had to split them into two shifts, one working day and the other working night, just to prevent them from going insane).

I should also note that I have recently beat away a 293-strong tribal raid with 17 colonists. One got killed and another was kidnapped, but I really thought I was dead when the red message came and my computer suddenly lagged to hell...

Yeah, the situation of colonists thinking"Excellent, we are winning, most of the raiders are gone! ...urgh, I'm so hungry. SHRIKE! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" and going on a rampage is rather infuriating. The fear mechanic worked very well to prevent this in the earlier versions, it's a shame it was removed...

I would want to see this solved by there being a lower limit of 15 or so for a few days after battle. Freezing the mood in place would be rather weird, since exhilariated colonists would stay that way even after the battle when the whole colony lies in ruin. Setting a lower limit would mean you would still have to care for your colonists so that they don't go insane when the adrenaline rush wears off.

IMHO the entire mechanoid raids should be changed. Right now, you get scythers who are deadly accurate and fast but fall really quickly and the slow but tanky centipedes. Pretty much every time the scythers charge forward and die, and then the centipedes are kited around the map for days and days. If the scythers actually followed the centipedes, they would be able to pick off the snipers while the centipedes would advance closer and into the range of their weapons.

Speaking of which, centis have a ton of health but rather laughable firepower. Minigun and the charge cannon barely ever hit anyone in cover, and the only saving grace of the inferno cannon is that it sets colonists on fire and drives them out of cover, but otherwise it's almost just as weak as the other two weapons. If they had something that hits hard, like a rocket launcher or a big cannon, people would finally have to be afraid of them. Right now, they are just meat shields...

Of course, those changes would make mechanoid raids much more deadly, so their numbers would have to be toned down a bit... but at least it wouldn't be the "shoot the harmless centipede a million times" anymore.

Fortunately the 'socially improper' thing has now been renamed in the unreleased version, so that problem will be gone once the next alpha is released.

Hauling a few items instead of many is often a problem, especially since the colonists drop their load if you order them to prioritise to haul another, even if they could easily hold both..

Stockpiles that get frequently taken from, like food in a kitchen, often have a lot of colonists doing pointless hauling (eg a cook takes 5 potatoes from his stockpile, a colonists goes to resupply it, soon the cook is finished and takes another 5 potatoes and the colonist goes there again, etc.) A "Resupply when under x% full" option would be very helpful there.

Perhaps the colonists who don't want to do certain jobs could be forced to, but they would do it with level 0 effectivity and get a severe unhappy thought (-25 "Had to something I absolutely despise")? People refusing certain jobs is fun most of the time, but then there are the cases when you have 7 colonists and only one of them can haul and clean.

You can confirm this by right clicking one of the items they refuse to use. If it says they cannot haul because it is "socially improper", then it is a prison room breach.

Home zone isn't enough for this. Once you get far enough in the game, your home zone is likely to be very big, especially with outdoor colonies. A new zone would be much better, especially if the colonists could only use beds and food inside the safe zone. That would make bunkers with essential needs like sleeping spots and nutrient paste dispensers possible, instead of having to rely on drafting everyone and sending them there.

The best guns for beginning shooters are (at least in my opinion) those that shoot plenty of bullets - minigun, LMG or Uzi in the beginning. The more bullets you shoot, the better the chance to actually hit the enemy. A hit will do little damage, but it will soften the enemy for your more competent colonists and has a chance to stun them.

The best weapon for training is a pistol, though - low damage and highest refire rate, meaning you will be able to take plenty of shots and the xp gain will be rather quick.

Trait interest really depends on the other game systems they have to interact with. So we'll be adding more traits continuously as the game develops.

Does that mean all unfinished traits will be disabled in the next version, or that the working traits will simply become more common?

@Halinder you misunderstand; if a room has an area above a certain threshold, a roof will not be generated, regardless of supports.

That doesn't seem to be the case in Ink's case, though. Looking at the screenshot in the first post, it seems that the roof did still generate but only where it was still supported (hence the 5 tile wide dark stripes near the walls). Building some pillars should have been enough to fix this.

ever with skill decay at play, you can reach level 20 at minimal passion.

In theory, but not really in practice. I have a Godlike (level 20) constructor with a burning passion who is the only one in the entire colony to do any building or repairing. The colony expands quickly and is made almost entirely out of wood, so pretty much the only thing he does is building new houses and rebuilding ones that burn down. But after every single raid, his level falls to 19 because of the skill rust. At Godlike, he loses about 20 skill points each few seconds, which amounts to several thousand per day. It's made even worse by the fact that skills still rust even when the colonists are asleep.

And that's with a rather easy to train skill with colonist with burning passion. I recon that lower passion or harder-to-train skills like crafting must be effectively impossible to reach in a normal colony. I'm all for skill rust, no colonist should be a system-class master at everything, but the current rate of it is just too much I think.

Indeed, pirate mortars cannot even be controlled at all, but they can still be manned by drafted colonists. If you do that, the mortar will start shooting the closest thing that is hostile to it, which most often happens to be your own colonists.