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This is the same game where any and all raiders can thrust their legless bodies at an object to set it on fire. I guess one must assume that they -all- carry a flint and steel.

Also the same game where colonists will rush into a 600 degree room and smash their faces against a fire until they, too, are on fire, and then run around in circles screaming for a while.

I like it. My first colony in A9 was this way, because I had a dude with three cooking but a burning passion, so I figured I'd let him cook and gain experience. Do not do this. Cooking does not train quickly. Your people will vomit everywhere in awkward situations for years. I remember probably a dozen situations in which - in the middle of being shot at - my colonists would just drop what they were doing and vomit during a raid. Good for a laugh, not great for a colony's survival. Not o mention nobody was a good crafter, so they're all running around in shoddy leather pants... The colony must have looked like some kind of deranged fetish dungeon from the outside.

The more enemies you have, the less likely any attacking enemy is a given specific enemy. If you make peace with the human factions, you will only get mechanoid attacks for all your attacks.

This. My current world has three pirate factions, so I virtually never see mechanoids. On my previous world, however, there was only one and I went friendly with the locals, so about half of my attacks came from mechanoids.

IIRC they have improved rest efficiency.

5% rest effectiveness improvement for non-stone beds, plus far, far higher beauty.

One day, during a raid on the colony known as Salvation, a Pirate who went by Clip was shot in the back by one of his comrades. Stunned, he fell to the ground in pain, the sounds of battle dulling as darkness closed in.

.....
He awoke in a hospital bed, warm and comfortable. Upon cursory examination, the pirate found that his wounds had been expertly bandaged, and he felt quite healthy, considering. Carefully rising from the bed, Clip took a look around. He was in a clean, stone room, alone. The doors were locked. Too tired and weak to think too much on it, he settled in to wait. Not long afterward an older woman arrived with a tray of food for him. While Clip ate his first (rather excellent!) meal in Salvation, the woman - who called herself Stone - revealed to him that he'd been asleep for days. His fellow raiders were all dead, it seemed, and he found himself feeling oddly satisfied by this news. He'd been shot in the back, he reasoned, and that was decidedly unkind of his comrades. Now they were dead and he wasn't, and that was the right of it.

Stone left, and soon a younger man, Keuneke, came and relocated him to a room in the "guest" complex. He had free access, he was told, to his room and the rest of the small complex, and his needs would be met. Clip was astonished by the freedom and generosity he was afforded as a prisoner - for he was a prisoner, whatever the colonists called it. Food was available in a spacious chow hall, and there was a large courtyard open to himself and his fellow guests. The beds were comfortable and the rooms cool and comfortable. All in all, Clip thought, this place was a paradise.
When Keuneke returned and offered him a place in the community, Clip was stunned! Not a week ago he'd been shooting at this man and his friends. Today he was being offered a place among them, as an equal, and it was clear to him that if he refused, he would continue to enjoy the relative freedom of the guest complex unhindered. He wavered for less than a day before accepting, and was struck yet again by the unwavering goodness here. He was given fresh - if somewhat rough - cotton clothing and, due to his skill at arms, offered some lightly used combat apparel and free access to the armory. He chose a well-maintained - if somewhat worse for wear - pulse rifle.

Some weeks of working happily alongside his new friends later, he was called upon to defend the colony. He obliged happily. One of the three pirate bands based on the planet was setting a siege, it seemed, and Keuneke and Grim - the senior members of Salvation's ad hoc defense force - wanted him on the team heading out to disrupt and break the siege if it could. He performed admirably, returning to the colony ahead of the surviving pirates with a gravely wounded Keuneke on his back.
From then on, Clip was Keuneke's partner in the field, covering the sniper against enemies attempting to close. He performed admirably each time, racking up a list of minor wounds and even a lost eye in defense of the colony and his friend.

Then came the weeks of hell. Siege after siege set up on the fringes of Salvation's operational range, and the colony's soldiers were pressed to their limits keeping pressure on the besieging forces. The guest complex's dining hall burned during the second siege, and several colonists were severely burned securing the safety of the prisoners. The soldiers accumulated wounds, and there never seemed to be enough time to heal before another siege was set up. By the third siege, Clip, Keuneke, and Grim were the only colonists hale enough to harry the siege camp. In the ensuing battle, Keuneke had his last remaining biological limb destroyed by a sniper round. Clip moved up to provide cover for Grim to gather Keuneke and retreat. It was then that a wild-eyed pirate charged Clip, cursing the colonist for a traitor as he plunged a small shiv into Clip's abdomen and twisted. The soldier reeled backward, and Grim dropped Keuneke long enough to put a round in the pirate's brain. Clip still lived, but he knew in that moment that he would die this day. That shiv had pierced something vital, and he could feel pain and cold blossoming from that small wound.
Grim was carrying Keuneke again, waving and calling for Clip to retreat. The turncoat pirate shook his head, taking up his rifle again. He'd cover their retreat, he told them.  He wasn't about to die in bed as the beleaguered colony struggled to fend off this attack or the next one. Instead, Clip, former pirate, took a knee behind a tree with his rifle, and with his first shot killed an advancing pirate. Then another. He retreated slowly, methodically, sustaining new wounds at an alarming rate. Finally within sight of the colony walls, Clip turned and stood his ground. There were three pirates left standing, a trail of the dead and wounded stretching back to their siege camp. Clip fired once, twice, but his wounds were too severe, his concentration and strength gone: his shots went wild. He knelt, numb, within sight of the home he'd only just found, and he smiled. He'd done it, he knew. The pirates would find the colony ready for them. His Salvation would survive this day.

As the pirates passed, one of them almost casually executed Clip - a single slash of his sword. In his dying moments, Clip almost pitied his killers.

The following morning, Keuneke himself came to retrieve his friend's body, wondering at the trail of corpses and blood in his wake. A new siege was already setting up, but this man deserved a solemn moment in Salvation.

.....
When the colonists left the planet that winter, they left clip behind, standing silent vigil over the colony that he had loved so briefly, under an oak tree, flanked by scenes from his life, rendered unto stone by his friends.


(His stomach was destroyed by that shiv. He would have starved to death in a hospital bed. Instead, I chose to have him go out fighting. He killed almost that entire siege himself before being cut down by a shielded swordsman. I thought he deserved a story.)

This mechanic makes me think of Ender's Game. More accurately, it makes me think of the saga at large, wherein Ender lives thousands of years, jumping from era to era, crisis to crisis. By the end he seems to be less an individual and more the embodiment of an idea.
My ancient colonists always get me thinking about what they might have been before. How did they get to this planet, so far removed from their origins?

Also, who's to say that Humanity originated on Earth in the timeline of the game?

It's been bothering me for stone creation since I started playing. Now it's bothering me for food storage when trying to keep quantities of meat and herbal medicine in a freezer with a crop production that exceeds demand. I've created three separate zones to work around this.

Cycle your crops. If I notice I've stored 2000 potatoes, I'll usually go ahead and turn my farms to medicine production for a time, or devilstrand. I also usually have multiple freezers. One for medicine and one for food.

Apologies for off topic.

3) developed Guilt trait. when you(warden) execute someone (prisoner) you carry that thought for life. why not have empathic/non-hunting wardens suffer if they put down a prisoner.

This seems unlikely, as it's much too subjective and situational. If you watched Ellie, Sex Slave - a long time colony member and friend - get gunned down by some jerk pirate, and you decide after some time that he's a monster and you can't keep him around any longer, why the hell should you feel bad?

Never mind Norton's "ws.reputation.1" system is being stupid again and decided to quarantine the first version then delete the second one.

Yeah, don't use Norton. There literally is not a worse paid antivirus/firewall. There are several free alternatives I could recommend, but if you're looking for top notch, go with Kaspersky Internet Security or Eset Smart Security.

I'd suggest a more efficient hydro layout and a more efficient power grid

More effiecient how? Suggestions greatly appreciated :-)

as well as a few more redundant batteries for emergencies.

I used to do larger battery banks, inc some disconnected for emergencies only, but generally find them more trouble than they're worth. My current set-up copes with almost everything.

I love the cafeteria/chow hall design of your dining area. Admittedly much cooler than my "one or two giant tables" design.

Thanks :-)

If you glance at my first post in the thread, you can see a more efficient hydroponics design. As for power grid, I mostly meant placement of power structures. You can see this as well in my screenshot, though it may behoove you to leave a space for colonists to put out fires. Solar panels do not block wind turbines, and they prevent trees from popping up where they are. It leaves a more compact, manageable power farm.

I could see them being literally removed by bladed weapons, but not by pointy sticks or small arms fire. I like the idea of them being mangled or disabled until they get proper treatment or something.

Challenge is the difficulty against which the rest are measured, but it's my belief that Rough is probably the best balance of challenge to success chance for a newer player. With only 8 colonists, Cassandra should be challenging but not unwinnable. My guess is that there are a few quirks of the gameplay that you need to be aware of.
If you're losing limbs at that rate, I suspect you're losing them to tribals and their pointy stick limb removal systems (pila and bows). The only advice I have on that front is never engage tribals on their terms. Outrange them or outmaneuver them, and use turrets to explode their melee troops. Line of sight AI exploiting is useful here (break their ranged AI by putting a wall at the entrance to your base with the only gap leading into the line of fire of a turret or two and your ranged colonists.
Traders are horribly broken, and the more useful they would be to you, the less likely you are to see them. I'm not sure how easy it would be to mod this, but I'm looking into it because the current system is stupid.
With sieges, game the AI. Use line of sight and superior range to your advantage if you can. If you can snipe out one or two members of the siege party, the remainder will blind charge your base, and you can mop them up on your terms with the aid of your base defenses.
Mechanoids aren't as scary as they seem. Scythers and their charge lances (right?) are a bit more of a threat, but if you can outflank them or simply overwhelm them, they go down fairly easily. Centipedes, on the other hand, are extremely tough, but their AI is easy to confuse. I just flank them from a few directions. They spin in circles rather than engaging in proper combat, and if they do stop to shoot, just move their target while they're preparing to shoot, and wait for them to start spinning again to move back. They take a while to kill, but they're not very threatening.

Try a game at rough, anyway, and try to keep the bad AI in mind when in combat.
Also, get used to peg legs. Peg legs for everyone!

Yeah, CR is painstakingly made and a great effort, however it functions so far outside the limitations or scope of the game that it's simply gamebreaking in a lot of ways. The answer to every possible situation is "but have you tried the browning?"

Weather in line with a colonist's preferred temperature range. 70F and sunny for the average colonist. Cooler, maybe snowy weather for cold lovers.
As you yourself, spending time engaged in their passions. I suggested something along that vein a few days ago, and I think it's a wonderful idea!
The bingeing system could be extended.
Making new friends, perhaps involving positive social interactions with new colonists or visiting friendlies.

[Max stockpile amounts]

Max stockpile amounts
Prioritise hauling by destination stockpile priority
Prisoner Gets Medicine
Prisoners put into medical or hospital beds should, by default, get medicine and the option should be on the bed rather than the prisoner. The number of times I've captured someone and found them to be poorly treated because I didn't select "gets medicine" on time is unreal.

I fully endorse these ideas.

Vents
I'd like to see, as an addition to the temperature system, simple vents. Something that would allow a heater or cooler to effect two or more distinct rooms, simply by treating them as a single room for heat purposes. There are a couple of mods that do something to this effect.

Prison
The current system for captives is lackluster, in my opinion. It's not imperative, as most prisoners are very temporary, but it would be nice to be able to have communal prison areas outside of the rooms - such as an exercise yard or a chow hall - which can be designated as prisoner accessible, so that prisoners can go outside and get rid of that -15 cabin fever malus or grab some nutrient paste from a communal dispenser. There is a mod that does this fairly well, but it seems like it should be vanilla functionality.

Modular stuff
This is another thing that mods have done quite successfully, but which I think should be a part of the game and probably could be improved and expanded upon. Tables, benches, and hydroponics tables come to mind, in particular. Solar panels could also fit. Modular construction would allow for more efficient, creative, and interesting constructions, and require fewer assets from the programmer. ex: ItchyFlea's Tables

Further down in that topic, ItchyFlea also has a tweak to the stonecutting table that seems like an obvious quick fix: Selectable stonecutting jobs.

Nutrient Paste Storage
This isn't my idea, but it is a good one in my opinion. Nutrient paste dispensers would benefit greatly as a source of emergency rations if it had a limited amount of internal paste storage, and perhaps slowly stored paste as long as it was powered and there was something in the hopper. This way, if the colony's main food source and power grid are for some reason simultaneously compromised, a short term supply of paste would be available.