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Sheesh. One would expect that the armor info would straight up show the deflection chance = display the deflection chance and damage filter amount in separate figures.

Do this.
I said do this.
No, finish what you started.
Goddamnit, no, you are not allowed to sleep just yet, finish the damn wall. It's just 8 blocks!
*sigh*
Fine... Go to sleep... Finish the wall in the morning...

Let's just say that if I have 20+ colonists, I refuse to fiddle and give each of them a personal room. It's pointless, really, at least from any gameplay mechanic perspective. Maybe I'm just lazy but it's far too much hassle with no real value in return. If there was a nice mood bonus for having luxurious personal quarters, then that'd be different, but there isn't. Colonists don't spend time in their bedrooms while awake, so any decorations are pointless. I kind of question the bonus for sleeping in a large room, yet it's somehow OK that the room is dirty and its walls are made of dirt.

If there was an actual benefit for having decorated personal quarters, then I'd go out of my way to make sure everyone was living comfortably, no matter how many colonists I'd have. I'd love to give my colonists everything they could ever want but they just don't really want anything beyond basic needs. The personal bedroom size demands are currently a little high. It's so high that I see it actually hampers the overall efficiency. I like to keep the walking distances short so that's why I mostly go for the shared barracks setup. With small colonies (let's say 3-8 colonists), however, that's when large 5x6 personal bedrooms can be considered.

Another thing I'm thinking about now is the bed type. It's irritating how sometimes colonists wake up, they go to work, do one job and walk all the way back to have breakfast. Why not eat breakfast first thing after waking up? I'm thinking now it's because the bed they sleep in is actually too good. It's so good that the sleep bar fills up so fast that the hunger isn't low enough to trigger the desire to eat, which in turn makes me think it might be more efficient to give them low quality beds (stone beds?), or at least avoid royal beds.

Prison, on the other hand, is what you do need to decorate. Fresh prisoners are already suffering mentally from various conditions so that's the one place that needs to look nice, just to prevent mental breaks. They can't escape the dump they are forced to live and sleep in, unlike colonists.

- Construction: Colonists with low construction skill could end up wasting more materials than normally needed, or downright fail to construct the intended object AND waste some of the materials in the process. Also, low skill repairers could randomly CAUSE damage to target object, potentially destroying it. When it comes to shutting down incapacitated mechs, they might end up HEALING some of the damage, potentially reactivating the mech.
- Medical: Skill level checks for treating some of the injuries. Result of failure: loss of medical supplies, more pain to the patient, no healing done, failed cybernetic limb installation (needs retry then), failed organ harvest or transplant results in death.
- Growing: Failure to harvest. Less harvest or no harvest from a plant.
- Research: Low skill researchers could randomly lose some of the research due to lack of academic discipline.
- Melee: Fumble and injure yourself. Get a bruise or even a broken bone or get stunned maybe. Randomly lower weapon HP if one is used due to lack of care.
- Social: Anger the conversational partner, or at least cause him/her negative mood.
- Cooking: Failure wastes ingredients. Randomly cook a lower quality meal than intended. Butchering yields less meat or no meat, same with animal hide quantity.
- Crafting: Delayed production (added time to craft the item), random waste of materials, potentially halting the crafting process.
- Art: See 'Crafting'.
- Mining: Random minor injuries. Accidentally mine an adjacent square although this might drive the OCD types crazy. Less minerals from ore veins.
- Shooting: Randomly lower weapon's HP due to misuse, eventually/potentially breaking the gun over time. Experienced shooters might actually passively repair the gun that they're carrying over time.

As a consolation, gain a nice XP bonus from failures since failures teach us the most.

I've had my best game experience so far with the ice sheet mod. Temps reach -80C at coldest, and I started at winter. Excited and nervous at the same time. I didn't notice it at first but I had turned off my music since the last I played. Lack of music gave it extra mood. The howling of the cold winds is the only music a real man needs! Arr! Anyway, I got extremely lucky however and got FOUR geothermal vents quite close to each other. I quickly walled off one of them and started from there. Almost starved to death. Funny that in such an extreme frozen wasteland it's not the lack of heat that almost got me but the starvation, even if I had a decent researcher and started going for the hydroponics immediately. Even more ludicrously, my colonists had negative thoughts for 'sleeping in heat'. Geothermal vents pack a punch when it comes to heat production, and probably humidity, too, if we think outside the actual gameplay elements. Gotta wonder what's it like to sleep in a sauna...

The only occasion I faced an almost hopeless situation was when a ship part crashed on the other side of the map in the middle of winter. 4 out of my 7 colonists collapsed on the way back due to hypothermia but they got all rescued. In hindsight, it might've been wiser to lure the mechs closer to the colony rather than engage them near the ship part.

Ice sheet isn't "normal biome" yet but it's quite special. (Will it be officially included though?) The other biomes don't offer much real challenge. It's almost boring that way but modding could be the solution to that.

Part of the fun was to come to the conclusion that there really was no hope. My fastest runner, now basically a zombie. He showed much promise. Thanks, Tybama. Anyway, the only thing that irks me about brain damage now is that if it happens to a captured enemy, and if you release him, he might starve before he reaches the edge of the map because he moves so insufferably slowly, even with a full stomach. And that's just with the default map size. As I'm typing this, I realize I should check from now on if incapped enemies have severe brain damage and just end them there instead of capturing. On the other hand, I could place a miniprison at the edge of the map, relocate them there, and then release.

[Shotgun]

Short answer: I'd say shotgun currently (Alpha 8). The R-4 is efficient as well.

Expanded analysis: Hunting in RimWorld is currently pretty ridiculous, even broken. Hunters fire dozens of rounds with complete disregard while at the same time all the other colonists have the same disregard for their own safety. Animals don't really flee when shots are fired at them, and hunters do not move closer in order to finish off an incapacitated animal. Hunters often change their firing position after aiming, being sometimes unable to choose the right range. Animals also move around quite hectically, which contributes to that. It's all quite ugly, but understandable (just alpha being alpha).

So, those facts in mind, you'll want a weapon with a short range, but not too short. I'll expand on that later on. You'll also want to avoid extra long aiming times, which means you'll want to avoid the M24 and Lee-Enfield. The M24, however, could be great against muffalos and other large animals because they are easier to hit (there's a clear to-hit bonus against them). You do not want to use the M24 to hunt small quick animals. That being said, choose a weapon based on what you're going to hunt and which colonist will be doing the hunting. Now, the worst possible combination for a hunting weapon in RimWorld is a weapon with short range and high aiming time because then the hunter is most likely to not fire off many rounds due to the animal moving constantly out of range. That's the theoretical worst case IMO. In practice, however, long range and high aiming time result in most repositionings. Long-range weapons become a curse if the animal gets incapacitated - a downed animal is harder to hit and the hunters don't change their position based on a really bad hit chance. The number of bullets in a burst is also a concern. If you're going to hunt a pack of muffalos far away from your colony, then go ahead and grab that minigun.

As for melee weapons, they are risky. BUT, right now I'm curious if a skilled melee colonist with a legendary level plasteel sword could instakill most animals. If you can get a melee hunter who can instakill, then you have a clear winner. You can't ask for better than that - no aiming time, completely safe, zero chance of bullet-related hunting accidents. Then again, it depends on the target animal as well. Rabbits and squirrels might go down reliably in one strike, but muffalos might fight back and they can deliver some serious hurt.

Shotgun
High damage, single shot, short range. A great, if not the best, overall and all-around hunting weapon for even a bad shooter, and no matter what you're hunting. Risky to use in the middle of a busy colony due to its high damage. Great for both manually directed hunters and automated hunters alike. Some chance of animal moving out of range, causing an occasional repositioning.

Pistol
Lower damage, single shot, short/medium range. Half decent for manual farming zone pest control. Even if you accidentally hit another colonist, the damage is likely non-permanent. Superior weapon for training up the Shooting skill. Sometimes a bad choice for automated hunters. Low damage could result in multiple incapacitations, leaving the hunter shooting mindlessly from a bad spot. But it trains the shooting skill, though...

R-4 Charge Rifle
High damage but burst fire. Highly efficient in the hands of a good shooter. Potentially dangerous in the hands of automated hunters who are assigned to kill every animal on the map. Marvelous for skilled manual hunters when you need to get meat as fast as possible.

M16
Long range, burst fire, low damage... Not for automated hunters, unless you go after large animals maybe. Great for defense however when multiple animals go berserk. Whether defense counts as hunting is debatable (it doesn't) but you are still killing animals in both cases, and M16 is great for engaging incoming animals at long ranges with its decent aiming time.

M24
Long-ass range, murderous damage, infinite aiming time. You do NOT want to get a hunting accident with this weapon. Bad choice against small animals, especially so for automated hunters. Potentially freakishly good and nerdishly thrilling against large animals. A great way to waste time and effort is to put an unskilled hunter with the trait 'Careful Shooter' or 'Trigger-happy' to hunt for small animals with an M24, preferrably during an eclipse. Is it hunting if you keep shooting but can't kill anything? That's your daily zen.

Charge Lance
No. Too inaccurate at long ranges. Unsuitable for automated hunters. Hunt manually with this if you must.

Lee-Enfield
Worse than M24 due to its lower damage. It is more accurate though. A pain to use even for manual hunters, IMO.

Uzi
Eh? Burst fire, inaccurate, long range. Risky to use. Meh. Hunt a muffalo with it if you must. Possibly good at defense.

LMG
Same as Uzi.

Minigun
Use against remote muffalo herds only if you absolutely insist using Minigun as a hunting weapon. Want anarchy? Assign every animal on the map to be hunted and give your hunter a minigun. Who are you to dictate where the bullets should or should not fly?

Grenades
When you don't care about the meat or carcasses, just pure elimination and destruction. Not effective aganist fast and mobile animals. Is it hunting if you kill animals without the intent of consuming the meat? What is the definition of hunting?

Molotov Cocktails
Useless, unless you wish to invoke rain. Potentially hazardous to the hunter.

T-9 Incendiary Launcher
See Molotov. Less risk of getting burned.

Bows, Pila, Stones
Likely inefficient or useless. Not tested.

Unarmed
When you hunt unarmed, you aren't actually hunting but providing training to your doctor.

That's not the hard part I think, the hard part would be knowing how the thickness of a wall should affect heat loss.

How does a room know how thick its walls are?
What if the walls aren't uniform (one is thicker than the other)?
What if the room's walls are made out of multiple materials?

Stuff like that seems tricky to tackle.

A room doesn't have to know anything. Instead each tile has to know at what rate it's supposed to give up heat and absorb heat. Each tile has 4 neighbors,  or 8 if the diagonally adjacent tiles count, plus the roof "tile". It's quite simple but the calculations for the entire map (=all of the tiles) could turn out CPU-intensive. I wouldn't know. Dwarf Fortress chokes easily under the water flow simulation but then again DF is a single-core game, and does not support multiple CPU cores.

That was hilarious! Sad and terrible, but hilarious and great. Epic struggle. Following mistakes were made:
- He had built the infirmary way too far from the kitchen. Doctors spent hours hauling meals to patients, failing to treat any wounds.
- He didn't assign extra doctors after the squirrel onslaught, and/or didn't drop other tasks in order to take care of the wounded.

Take notes. There will be a quiz. 

Would love to be able to tweak the autosave settings:
- The number of autosave slots
- The autosave interval OR to turn it off completely

Now you listen to me, Tynan.

Allow me to explain why autosave can be a bad feature. It snaps the player out of "flow" for a second, breaking concentration multiple times per session. That applies to at least RimWorld. Now, RimWorld can also be a very hectic game, meaning a thousand things are happening at once. The autosave irked me in the past and made me nervous, due to the fear of instability, just me waiting for my machine to choke when the autosave kicked in during a big fight. The game being alpha is the same exact reason why autosave made me nervous. I knew it was alpha, and from my point of view that just increased the likelihood of a crash during autosave. That being said, I've been wrong about it, since RimWorld has been a pretty solid experience. I have not had a single autosave related crash. Of course I, the player, can't know that beforehand. In the beginning all I know is that I have a hectic game that autosaves whether I like it or not, no matter how frantic the situation is, and that the game is (potentially delicate, fragile) alpha. Also, autosave slots take up precious interface space in the 'Load Game' menu.

TL;DR
- Autosave breaks concentration
- Autosave promotes mild apprehension or mild agitation
- Autosave slots take up interface space in 'Load Game' menu
- The problem is exacerbated if autosave cannot be controlled

Solutions:
- Give control over autosave to the player
- Have the game autosave only during seemingly quiet periods
- Add quicksave, with its hotkeys, which I presume would be the same as autosave but with a player-controlled trigger.

Bottom line: Not a deal breaker to me. Not anymore. I'm too used to autosave's demands by this point. It beat me to submission over time. I love autosave. It interrupts me because it loves me. Don't you dare talk bad about my autosave.

- I haven't tried this but instead of building a clear and symmetrical killing zone, build a large sparse semi-random forest of singular stone wall blocks. They'll work as cover for your colonists as well as raiders. That should/could make battles interesting, turning every fight into a shooting chess match of sorts.

- Having trouble with raiders overwhelming you with sheer numbers? Build cover spots for the raiders in the killing field to encourage them to take cover instead of rushing towards you. Just make sure their cover is worse than yours!

- Raiders never attack natural rock. Never mine exterior rock needlessly.

A strong love-hate relationship is a sign of a legendary game.

Dwarf Fortress? Check.
"Come on, come on... dig faster... You! Urist! Go cut some trees. W-- whoa.. what? Where's the axe? Rhesus macaques stole my only axe! Damn you, apes! Damn youuu!"

Jagged Alliance 2? Check.
"A-ha! Gotcha now! Suck lead, redshirt... BOOM! Eh? Wolf? How can you miss? He's like 3 tiles away...! Nooo!"

RimWorld? Check.
"No, don't run th-- Goddamnit. Now go grab... Oh wait, you're not a hauler... No, I said go grab the.. That's better. Whoooa! Why is the generator on fire! UGH! Fine, let that damn thing burn... No, I said let it burn! Now, report to the infirmary. Wish you'd stop trying to hug the flames... Need a medical bed... GAH! NO MEDKITS! Fine. Walk it off. Goddamnit, walk it off, I said! Good, go eat. WHY AM I LOW ON FOOD! What now? A pirate raid! They're well-armed? Good!"

No, that damn hauling scheme was already in Alpha 7. Eventually it made me want to stop playing and stop paying attention to RimWorld. It truly makes hauling very inefficient as a whole, dragging down the entire colony efficiency. Good logistics is hard to pull off though. The logic alone is a nightmare to design. But, that being said, gathering full stacks would be far more efficient compared to the current system. Maybe haulers could use a separate configuration XML-file, free for the player to edit and experiment with?

The questions would be:
-How far should a hauler be allowed to travel to collect loose items of the same type in order to assemble a full stack?
-Return items when the carried stack is X% full, and if the next closest loose "small pile" is over Y squares away, in which the player should define X, Y, and "small pile".
-To what point (percentage) should a stockpile level drop before haulers are sent out to fill up the stockpile?
-Are the haulers free to do hauling if they have nothing better to do, which is to ask should they aggressively try to keep stockpiles full or is it OK if a stockpile is 80% full and there are still items out there?
-In case of cold outdoor temperatures, how much injury (frostbites) are the haulers allowed to sustain, or should they always fully warm up themselves first before heading out into the cold?
-Should the haulers go for the most distant items first or the closest ones?
-Should the haulers deliver items to the furthest possible square of a stockpile or the nearest, which is the same as asking should they start filling from the back of the room first or should they conveniently create barricades for the future haulers?

Maybe some of the choices should be made adjustable in-game, because I sure as hell know that "good logistics" depends on the situation, as priorities and circumstances can shift quickly.

Note: I haven't played Alpha 8

Maybe take a glance at the BaseIncidents.xml file? In Mods\Core\Defs\IncidentDefs.
Each incident has a % chance to trigger per day. Each incident also has a cooldown timer, so for example you won't get two crashed ship parts on the same day. Also, when it comes to that particular event, you won't get another crashed ship part as long as the previous one still exists. The file mentioned above should be worth inspecting.

Ways to cripple performance:
- Play on a huge map
- Have lots of colonists, animals, raiders - collectively known as pawns - wandering around on the map
- Have all tasks enabled for all 30+ of your colonists (if you ever get that many)
- Have lots of fire going on (the hot flamey kind, not gunfire)


However, there is something about the pathfinding (I think) that could use work. When I get a raider group, I get slowdowns at almost consistent intervals as they advance towards my colony. It's as if every raider's pathfinding is updated at the same time, thereby punching my system in the gut repeatedly.