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I found out last night that apparently the steel and plasteel aren't ores at all, but collapsed and compacted ancient structures. It's in the info tabs for the mineable compacted metals. Even in that context it's a bit flimsy and messes with my suspension of disbelief, but at least there is a lore explanation for it.

Oh my gosh. This would so liven up the stories board! Get over there! Quick! I have to try this sometime

Itchyflea has a mod for floor deconstruction. There are some limitations, however, and since they can only be built on concrete or smooth stone, you still can't get your soil back.

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It's quite the opposite - more sophisticated automation lets you to do away with micromanaging.

I think Crafting category could be split into more stuff. Things currently falling into crafting:
- smithing
- tailoring
- stonecutting
- smelting
- machining

Smithing and tailoring is creating new items for colonists to use. Stonecutting is making construction materials, just like smelting and machining. How about this split:
Crafting: smithing+tailoring
Processing/Recycling: stonecutting+smelting+machining

There are other similarities.
Smithing and tailoring benefit from skill level, and train Crafting skill. They often make things for sale. Smithing and tailoring is mostly sitting at the table and using tools.
Stonecutting, smelting, machining don't increase Crafting skill (in alpha9), and I think they don't benefit from it. These actions tend to involve a lot of fetching materials and hauling produce to a stockpile.

I actually strongly support this point. It has been really bothering me that my craftspeople need to be micromanaged so that my massively skilled clothes-maker isn't sitting around smelting slag while some derp with 2 crafting on priority 4 is wasting my devilstrand on shoddy gear. A separation of these activities into distinct categories (or at very least a skill lock) would make crafting a much less frustrating microfest in the long term.

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And that's why every colony of mine is deep under a mountain.

I found myself doing this a lot as well, so I've challenged myself to build outside a little more, and man am I glad I did. I find the extra challenge nice, and I find that my colonies are coming out more attractive, as flooring is an actual issue (can't just smooth the stone for a nice +4).

As to the topic at hand, you really do have to hunt for the truly extreme temperature ranges. It's a lot of fun once you've found one, though. I still haven't managed to adapt a successful strategy for non-mountain colonies in the frigid maps.

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This just gives me flashbacks of playing X games, just endless menus nested within menus within menus... considering that series was notorious for its hilariously bad UI I sincerely hope Rimworld doesn't go down that route.

I sincerely doubt RimWorld will ever reach the level of complexity and micromanagement that the X games prior to X:R had.

Will a hunter carry a carcass back even though he won't haul?  I assume it's similar to how a guy who won't haul will still get materials and bring them to the work site.  If so, early game I still get rid of that guy or sell him to a trader.  Mid-Late game hes my new dedicated hunter.  Even if he doesn't bring carcasses back I would still use him late game to fight.

I believe that a hunter incapable of hauling will still return his kill, though I've never actually tested this. When returning a kill, rather than "Hauling squirrel (dead) to stockpile 7" or whatever, it says something to the effect of "Hunting squirrelcorpse" or similar. This leads me to think that perhaps the behavior is different.

Probably won't happen.

[...]will there be a way to fix brain damage in the future???

Probably not. If everything's fixable, nothing's tragic.

Slavery isn't just one thing. Slavery in ancient times, or among tribal societies, was more of a ritual behaviour than an intent to hurt and exploit other people. Slaves could often earn their freedom, and were generally treated as fellow human beings, not as animals. Some could marry and have children and expect their families to be reasonably safe. Their status were more like that of an indentured servant than a slave.

Contrast this with slavery in the last couple of hundred years, where slaves were treated as cattle or sub-human.

Slavery in Rimworld is definitely of the last type. You hand over a human and you get cash. It's pure business, there is no sort of ritual or rule involved. It's exploitation of fellow human beings without any rationale except "you're worthless to me, so I might as well turn you into money".

Greek slavery was virtually identical to Atlantic slavery, except that murdering them was a crime, as it was believed that the practice could lead to murder becoming commonplace. Otherwise, they were generally treated "as domestic animals." Slavery was hereditary. They were regularly flogged, they could not testify at trial unless under torture, and they had no recognized individual rights in most city states. They were viewed as inferior. Even if freed, they could not become citizens. There is no record of anyone at the time finding this to be morally objectionable.
Spartans had a holiday devoted to murdering the helots.
Roman slaves were even worse off in some ways. They could own property, unless the master decided they couldn't, as it technically belonged to him. They could be summarily executed, and had no legal rights or protections. Free slaves could become citizens, and even vote, but they could not hold office or priesthood. As the Empire stabilized, more and more restrictions were placed on freeing slaves, and escapees were hunted down and returned.
Slavery in African tribal societies was and is almost identical to the system that the West used in the colonial era. Tribal Africans actually went to war specifically to gather slaves. Europeans learned that system from black West African slavers, who went and enslaved a bunch of people, herded and sold them as cattle to Westerners. Difference is, we stopped. This still happens today, particularly throughout Africa and  Asia. Which is to say that in a modern world where every country on the planet has laws (ostensibly) against slavery, roughly one in two hundred and thirty people is living in slavery.

RimWorld takes place in a much less regulated time period, on a much vaster scale, with far fewer social norms. Again, given humanity's penchant for slavery as the norm, I really think you're letting current Western sensibilities and your personal abhorrence of the practice overshadow the fact that in all likelihood, many people just would not be bothered given the provided backdrop.

So I really, really love the vents. They seem to be an elegant solution to the need for a heater or cooler in every room. However, I really would like to have just those assets added to my game, without the focus on complex industrial heating setups. Any chance of making the vents a separate mini-mod for those of us looking to make primarily small quality of life improvements to a mostly vanilla game?
I'd do it myself if I had the time in my life currently to take up modding a new game.

A vent unit would actually be non-powered wall unit that simply makes the entire space count as the same area for climate control, or helps one temperature spill into another the same way an open door does, but without people being able to pass through it.  It might have an open/close setting too.

This.
I've been all about the vents idea this beta, and I have been looking at that mod, but I wish more mod creators would keep things simple or modular... What I want from that mod is the vents and none of the rest. I see them as a simple convenience feature that enhances the vanilla without changing it much. Central heating and inline ducts and industrial heating/cooling units is too much mod for me, and I feel like it takes the focus away from the story and the gameplay and focuses it on architecture instead.

If I could pick just one mod for Rimwolrd, this would be it. Absolutely essential, in my mind, as a quality of life and convenience add-on. Thanks for making this, and thanks for making it available to us!

This is one of several mods, along with the interface mod, that I am starting to consider essential to this game. As a player looking to keep the "vanilla" feel of the game while still looking for ways to improve gameplay, I love how much time and effort EdB puts into balance and quality of life for the player.
The complexity of making the points system work without overly constraining the player or allowing hugely unbalanced starts is almost incomprehensible, and while I see a lot of room for improvement, I'm very impressed by how balanced it feels overall.

Thanks for this mod and all of the hard work that must go into it!

Tribal weapons absolutely do not need to be any more threatening. The absurd likelihood of dismemberment via vaguely pointy, slow moving projectile is already plenty annoying without it being liable to also set you on fire.

I think it would be interesting, for one, to have a "hall of fame" type stat somewhere where we can name a colony and escape ship and see who was all in their with their history.

On top of that, it would be extremely interesting to have an event were one or more of your previous colonists crash land in another playthrough.

Let say, you have 3 colonists crash land on your 20th game and it's the colonists from your first escape. It could be awesome to see your favorite colonist pop out again and it could be really tragic as well if that vegetable colonist you thought was going to be "saved" in cryo either crash lands safely to be "saved" again or just flat out dies on impact. Your favorite colonist from your first colony could even die on impact ending once great story in tragedy instead.

This would, of course, require either keeping and marking saves as "complete" or creating completely new "complete" saves with no ties to worlds (they can crash on new worlds or the same one) and just contain the colonists info and maybe their ship/colony name.

It would bring much more meaning to escaping (hall of fame) and bring more meaning to new games as well.

This would be nice on a few levels. I would like to see completion marked somehow, maybe the "colony" on the map changed to "abandoned" when you've left the planet or been wiped out. Just some indication that it's not, in fact, a living functioning colony anymore.
It would also be really cool to maybe have the game generate cryo pods containing colonists from previous successes, or to have slavers have a small chance to be carrying colonists who were kidnapped in raids, or to have a small chance of a colonists kidnapped by tribals be present in a tribal raid on another colony later.
In general, simply adding a legacy to tie together playthroughs. Chronology would probably be the biggest barrier to this right now, from a storytelling perspective, as every colony has the same start date.