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Yeah, thats that industry standard A-E-376611.b for work animals on underindustrialized worlds.

Sheesh, people here know nothing.

I do not think the event itself is the problem - it's the way wildfires start with every lightning stroke and that one of those is enough to turn half your map into a wasteland - a dozen or two usually means your map is a desert from now on. This is not only a gameplay problem, but a fun problem as well - I for one choose biomes not only for their difficulties, but also for their environments.

Something should be done about the way fires spread and go out on themselves, similar to an overhaul of how grass regrows, for example.

Edit: I know the game usually gives a rain shower after a fire as a bandaid fix, but that does not help against the big mass fires at all.

I think it would be good if colonists needed a certain level of weapon skills to use them safely. If a colonist has a lower rank, the accuracy and speed drops and there is the possibility that the colonist will damage himself or damage the weapon.
If a charge rifle blow your hand away, it will be less used ...

Not only is that an unrealistic change (how much more difficult can squeezing one trigger vs another be), but also would require more micromanagement (making sure there isnt a bad shooter that picks up the wrong weapon), add frustration (why can't my guy shoot that rifle, why do guns always explode in my face, why is that nice high-tech drop I got useless for the next 7 months), and add absolutely no positive gameplay elements.

The main question one should always think about when suggesting changes like this is:

"What possible gameplay gain could there be by this complication".

I see none. The amount of stuff that needs a frustrating amount of unnecessary micromanagement is too high in this game already. Why add to that for ... what exactly is the gain in gameplay or fun? It's not even majorly unrealistic and definitely nothing immersion breaking.

[My suggestion:]

Just wanted to chime in once more:

This thread seems to run away to "add stuff"-land. I do not think more weapons are neccessary (or helpful in the current situation). The actual amount and names of the current weapons are sufficient to give each of them a niche - the problem is just that most of them do not have one right now.

Re-tuning the current weapons so that most feel useful and have something unique going for them should be a priority. Adding anything else can safely be left to modders.

My suggestion:

Shortbows, Pilae, Grenades and the superweapons do not need to be rebalanced much (even though I dislike the ridiculousness of the rocket launchers, since nothing helps you against those).

Low-Tier-Weapons:
These three weapons form the "core", are better than the barbaric weapons and fullfull three distinctive roles. Basically a bad assault rifle (smg), a bad sniper rifle (bow) and a bad shotgun (pistol). These three weapons should also form the bulk of early game raider equipment and slowly phase out to give room to more mid-tier stuff.

Great Bow
Since it nowadays comes after quite some tech, it could stand to be a bit stronger. Some more range and a small increase damage, to make it stand out more as an upgrade to the other barbaric weapons and not too shabby an option to equip a colonist with if you want a long range weapons and all you rifles are already in use.

Pistol
Rework it into a heavy pistol (or revolver, befitting the mood) and up the damage quite a bit (20?) while slightly lowering its rate of fire. A hand cannon that is overall not that strong, but a solid backup until you find a good rifle.

SMG
One is enough. Use the stats of the heavy one with the range of the small one. Attack speed roughly in-between them. Should basically be almost as good as the assault rifle with a bit less range.


Mid-Tier-Weapons
These will form the core of most of the game. At the beginning, they will be rare (besides the starting survival rifle, obviously). After a few raids, these will become the common items to loot. These are the items players would want to craft a few of when they first get the appropriate tech.

Survival Rifle
Stays more or less like it is now. A very slight damage buff (perhaps greatbow, pistol and this one all share 20 damage?). Works well as a baseline "cannot go wrong" weapon.

Shotgun
If it keeps its mechanics as a single shot weapon, up the damage significantly. 30 at the very least. Slightly lower attack speed. That way, its a faster shooting close range heavy damage weapon. Almost the same punch as a sniper, much better dps. Dps better than most weapons, but the range of 16 hurts. If too good, make the accurracy fall off quicker.

Assault Rifle
More damage per shot than right now. About 10 should do the trick. It should have the highest dps of all the weapons until this tier, but only closely edge out shotgun and smg. Its main benefit will be the good range to go with that. Its main drawback will be the low punch per shot.


High-Tier-Weapons
These weapons should require an additional, expensive tech - or one smaller tech, each (enhanced optics for the sniper, something technical sounding for the charger, high-velocity-barrels or something like that for the lmg). They are slightly better and much more expensive to craft and much rarer as drops (and therefore, as enemy weaponry).

Sniper Rifle
More or less stays like it is. If it needs a slight buff, make it attack a tad faster.

Charge Rifle
More or less stays like it is. Perhaps +1 dmg per shot since we buffed the assault rifle.

LMG
Burst count up to 12 or so. Longer warmup, a bit lower cooldown. Should have the highest sustained dps, but stays at the relatively low dmg per bullet. Gains a bit of range.

PS
Oh, and weapon ranges should be homogenized a bit. Most follow the 4-jump-rule, but there are some strange outliers. I suggest giving all weapons one of 16/24/32/40. 2-3 spaces more or less do not make a real difference in practice, but 8-tile-brackets feel noticable.

The problem with charge rifles isn't just that they are pretty powerful and relatively common/easy to make. The problem is that there are no workable alternatives. The following weapons are what I consider actually usable given the difficulty of the game in general and the toughness of mechs in particular:


A few Snipers are good to force enemies to come closer and have a response to enemy snipers. Also they are good against mechs and when hunting dangerous animals. They suffer from low dps and a dead zone, so they cannot be used as a mass infantry weapon.

Survival Rifles are an okay substitute and have no "dead zone", but are overall too low on dps and still too low on punch to be more than a stop-gap solution until better stuff is available for everyone.

Bows are a way to make your guys have a decent ranged weapon that is almost free before you have enough loot/tech.

Charge Rifles pack a solid punch, are very strong against un/weakly armored foes and are plentiful and not that expensive to craft. Their only downside is one that is shared by half of the weapons not listed up there and manageable in solid defensive positions.

And, well, that's it.
Everything else sucks.

Since even medium sized animals have a bazillion hp, quite some opponents have decent armor and animals are hard to hit, those pistols, smgs, assault rifles and miniguns simply deal too low damage. Most of them suffer from cannot-penetrate-mech-armor-syndrome heavily. The shotguns are almost there because they pack decent punch, decent dps and good accuracy - but they cannot even be used to safely hunt a potentially aggressive animal because you are dead before firing the second shot.

A full weapon rebalance is very much needed.

I don't see stonecutting change as necessary. You just go into the order details and can specify which kind of blocks you want them to make, the same way to would disallow someone crafting a sculpture form using up all your steel or gold for example.

The problem is in the limits. Without the mod, you can only specify "craft stone blocks until we have 200". Usually, you only want the hardest stone for building, though, and perhaps some marble for statues. After a while, your storage fills up with all kinds of unwanted stone blocks that not only were unneccessary to craft but also count against those 200 you set - meaning you have to raise the limit (and waste more time and storage space) or never get granite and marble again.

There are quite a few mods I deem almost neccessary for smooth gameplay that fix little annoyances like this, and I would really like to see a quality of life pass in one of the next patches that incorporates most of these into the base game, similar to how the pawn bar took a while.

The handling of stonecutting and different wood types, storage solutions, rebalancing of mood and injury effects, a meeting spot for outsiders, animal handling/feeding/training (and most of all, a way to keep them the .... away from battle without having to set a noncombatant as their master), and so on.