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So, as it is, visitors or passers by that get "attacked" (usually because they thought walking through the middle of a fire fight or between my hunter and their quarry was logical  ) immediately turn hostile, but then so do the rest of their faction.

The faction, however, shouldn't become hostile until a member of the party leaves the map. This would allow players to cover up their transgressions, and for those more unscrupulous players (like me  ) to ambush neutral/friendly groups.

In order to avoid unbalancing gameplay, after say 3 groups "disappear"  - no penalty for individuals - while passing through your land, the faction becomes suspicious, causing a relations penalty (but not opening hostilities) and stops sending groups for a time. Once groups begin returning, if more disappear soon after, hostilities are opened.

As an extra addition, the counter on the number of missing groups could decay over time, allowing a patient player to avoid suspicion altogether. It would need to be a fair amount of time though, say 90 days to take 1 off the total.

A preference system where the number of priorities available depends on the number of colonists would be kind of redundant, because the only time it would come into effect is when there are multiple colonists with a specific job enabled sitting idle; not to mention that it could end up drawing colonist from the opposite side of your base to do a job - when the person next to it could have already finished it and moved on to the next job by the time the other colonist arrives - simply because the distant colonist has a higher priority in that job.

If the number of priorities is equal to the total number of jobs, it still gives the player the option to micromanage an individual's tasks, but confers more control than the current system of 1-4.

mine is not in the list, but i would love to see every colonist have their own personal mini inventory.

I'd really like to see this as well. Not just for colonists though, for everyone. Then you could go and loot the corpses after a battle.

Only the two huh... Well I was taking a look at the art resources Tynan put on here a while ago (that's what made me think of it actually) and there are a couple more (including a power armour one  ) so with any luck they'll make it into the next release.

This is great 

You should add in helmets and hats as well.

having hp determine decay might be weird if you are accustomed to throwing grenades at corpses

I reckon corpses ought to be turned into chunky soup if hit directly by a grenade With an appropriately huge happiness penalty of course.

And any that aren't hit directly and catch alight could become a "charred corpse" with the same decay rate, but burning would still speed up the process of turning to a skeleton - possibly a black, charred looking one.

According to the wiki, the Lee-Enfield has 9 accuracy, to a pistol's 4, so logically I should have hit twice as much, not including skills. And it wasn't as if pistol guy was a veritable marksman, my 11 skill ex-marine just couldn't hit the side of a building. From the inside.

At least now I know why he stopped being a marine...

I definitely like the idea of fear tech affecting relations, even more so if it affects relations more if the corpse of someone from a specific faction is used,  and then a visitor from that faction encounters it. Not to mention that would also be cool for affecting hostile morale.

As far as why more fear tech, I can't speak for most people but I like it more for the fact that it allows the morality choices you'll typically not find in strategy games, that are usually reserved for RPG's like Fable and the like. More ways to play are never a bad thing; and being the bad guy is so much more fun.

In terms of happiness/fear and the loyalty threshold, I always thought the two should be mutually exclusive, set on a scale where 0 is in the center, and essentially symbolises total disillusionment, -100 is terrified, while +100 is ecstatic. There would need to be some sort of time delay in how long it takes someone to begin having a breakdown though, or people could snap while they shift between sides of the scale.

As it is currently, corpses decay a little, and then somehow manage to be eternally preserved half decayed. I've seen a lot of talk about incinerators and the like, but I'd like to see them decay through several stages, causing varying psychological effects throughout the process.

I think with the 100 hp a corpse has, about 15 lost per day seems a decent amount - about a week to decay fully. Probaly nowhere near a realistic amount of time, but remember you just made an entire hi-tech base out of scrap metal, so...

Anyway, the first stage would obviously be the fresh corpse. 100-86 hp, so the first 24hrs. pretty negligible happiness penalty, minor fear increase, but nothing really worth worrying about. This is the point at which you want to shift it somewhere away from your colonists, before it stinks up the place.

The next stage is when it starts to rot. 85-56 hp. It stinks, it looks nasty, and the colonists hate it. Moderate penalty on happiness, moderate fear increase.

Stage three is when it gets really nasty - it's bloating, the bugs are chowing down, and it's absolutely noxious. This is 55-0 hp. Big happiness penalty, moderate fear increase.

If scavenger/predatory animals are implemented, they could feed on the corpse to expedite the process.

Once it hits 0, the corpse is replaced with a skeleton, which can be used for fear tech.

Like this for example:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hnwiirrfc2z9ohd/2013-03-31_00002.jpg

To that end, it would be cool if raiders suffered penalties from fear tech, say an accuracy penalty, which could be negated by certain personality traits once those come into use. Also, your superstitious tribal enemies are going to be more affected than pirates and the like, who probably decorate their base similarly, whereas more civilised factions (outlander towns etc.) would sit somewhere in between.

I've definitely noticed this on a more than a few occasions; I mean you'd think a colonist with 11 shooting skill and a Lee-Enfield would trump a lone raider with 3 shooting skill and a pistol - easy right?

Well I did... and then I didn't.

Yeah I've seen the cheval de frise before, though I'd never heard their name before. They seem to pop up in a few places, from Skyrim to The Walking Dead haha

But speaking of ditches with spikes, covered spike pits would be cool as well - colonists know where they are, and for convenience's sake, friendlies instinctively navigate around them, but enemies could take a hefty hit from them.

Though that could possibly be a balance issue, maybe have a minimum separation or something, and they'd only be a one off use per battle deal, they have to be recovered before the next, or raiders see and avoid them.

They could be made of wood, but then be completely broken after use, or sharpened stones/metal spikes, and only require repairs.

I noticed in the changelog that trees and wood are in, and I thought it would be cool if you could add stakes to sand bag emplacements.

Deny your enemies the use of your cover, and cause potential injury if you cross in the wrong direction. Colonists would obviously need to prioritise less dangerous paths if available, and raiders would need to weigh risk vs. reward - do they funnel through the safe spaces, risking heavy gunfire, or charge over and risk damage from the stakes?

Tribals should be more likely to charge over, due to their more aggressive nature and sheer numbers, and animals should completely ignore spikes and charge on through, with squirrels and boomrats immune due to their size, and muffalo taking increased damage because of theirs.

Metal spikes would also be a viable option, with more durability and damage/hit potential, and being due to being sharpened along its edge, able to damage squirrels and boomrats, with the trade-off of metal being more valuable (though I find it's particularly abundant at the moment) due to its use in more important equipment.

Stakes/spikes could be built on top of existing sandbags, and occupy the space adjacent to the sandbags themselves.

Yeah, seems to be.

No worries mate, happy to help.

First off, the subject for this was a mistype, I meant colonists shooting each other, but anyway. So, I had a bit of a play with the dev mode tools and managed to reproduce it after a few tries. I tried forcing different mental breaks with the tools, but no dice. So I tried forcing them via normal game mechanics - assigning soldiers and starving them, depriving them of sleep and sticking them in the ugliest place possible; using this method I managed to reproduce the bug.

As far as I can tell, the cause is the double mental break caused by arresting a non-violent broken colonist, who then has a second, violent mental break while being dragged to his cell. It doesn't seem to work with dev mode forced breaks because they cause the break without altering happiness or fear, meaning the second break doesn't occur.

I first encountered this right after I arrested a colonist who had just had a mental breakdown, who had a psychotic episode on the way back and proceeded to attack his captor. I drafted a second person to expedite the process of beating him into submission, and then everyone went on their merry way (well everyone but the guy bleeding on the floor, but he asked for it).

A few minutes later, I heard the telltale tat-tat of pistol fire... What the hell? There was no one on the map but me and the prisoners, and no explanation as to what had caused the sound, so I let it slide. But surely enough, a few minutes later, tat-tat-tat. This time, after some searching, I found that the imprisoned colonist was wounded, and that the freshly built walls of my half finished atrium (which was doubling as my prison until it was completed and the prison could be dug out) were sporting damage in several spots - too many to be a coincidence in walls that had only been built that day.

Determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, I watched, and I waited. Floors were smoothed, and walls were built, and the cleaner studiously cleaned the rubble of the new floor... and then I spotted it: in between cleaning two squares, my cleaner casually squeezed off a round, narrowly missing the prisoner. I watched for a few more minutes in disbelief as the psycho shot the prisoner twice, and then put a round into the back of my miner as he walked past. Clean some floor, spill some blood; clean some floor, spill some blood. I don't think she understood the concept of cleaning - and she was formerly a janitor! So I followed the natural response: I yelled various expletives at the monitor and ordered her to drop her weapon.

But this wasn't an isolated incident; no sooner had she dropped her weapon than the miner decided to follow her example. Dig some rock, make the nearest colonist dig out a bullet. So he was ordered to drop his weapon too. After a third colonist opened fire, I'd had enough, and I quit.

So I updated to the newest version, I was on 0.3.408, updated to 0.3.413. So I started a new game, and a little while in, dismayed by constant hardships, a colonist had a breakdown. So I arrested her, and she was locked in her cell without incident and everything proceeded as normal. A few minutes after that however, another broke down (too many half rotted corpses apparently... pansy) and as he was being detained he went mental, and received a beating... Déjà vu.

And what do you know, the warden walked in, deposited the prisoner's meal, and gave him a case of acute lead poisoning. Had a friendly chat with him, gave him another dose. I'm sure that's conducive to recruitment!

The only common factor seems to be arresting a colonist who has had a breakdown, and goes mental while being arrested. Also, the first instance had several raider prisoners in the same room, and none of them were ever targeted, which leads me to believe that only colonists are affected. Has anyone else encountered this or something similar?