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Maybe the game is already set to never attack you with mechanoids during a solar flare, I just used dev mode to force mechanoids to attack me after I forced a solar flare.

Solar flares are the hardest thing for me to survived when they are paired with a raid.

My understanding is that it's the nitrogen in the air, not the oxygen, which is blue. So you could theoretically replace the nitrogen with something else (like any noble gas) and retain breathable air.

The downside is if you used helium it would all float away leaving you with just oxygen, and if you used any of the other noble gasses then they would sink to the bottom of the atmosphere and smoother everyone to death as the lighter oxygen floats at the top. Oxygen and nitrogen are a good mix because they are about equal in mass.

Probably the wrong place to post this, but I would just like to say that I am very pleased with the changes in Alpha 4 and think you guys have done a wonderful job with the wood eco, mechanoids, music, and other changes. In particular I think wood eco and new tech are a good step towards RimWorld developing more clearly defined early/mid/late-game stages, and the music nicely enhances the the game's atmosphere.

Saw some logs into planks.

We've had usability issues with this; I'd hoped that the red text on the mouse when you build things for which you have no materials would have helped.... Sorry.

I would just like to echo other users and add that the wood logs, wood planks, and stone block icons look to similar to me to discern which is which without further context clues.

2) has a lot of potential for growth and development and should be promising in the future. Maybe some day there will be a Mafia mod that lets you send home dead raiders cut up in a bucket back to their homes to increase that colony's fear of you.

I agree with the AI change, and would like to add that maybe they could hook up to your conduits and start sucking up your electricity and using it for themselves? Or have dedicated repair bots which repair just like your colonists do, but they repair mechanoids who are damaged, or even rebuild mechanoid corpses. In fact, you could add medics in general to raider groups and it would force more strategy as you try to take the medics down early, and would force being more aggressive and not just sitting back trying to snipe people slowly to death with your slightly better weapons.

Additionally, I would really like it if they had their own battle music. I liked the dramatic music added in this version during stressful situations, if the mechanoids had an eerie sci-fy chiptune-esque theme that played when they attacked I think it could add a lot to the atmosphere.

[Water Sources:]

Ya, these suggestions are not going to go away until this game implements water, so I might as well mention my water ideas.

Water Sources:
Pond: Randomly dispersed around map, they are an accessible source of water that expands and shrinks within a finite boundary depending on the amount of water. Ponds spawn fish in them which can be selected for hunting. Colonists can either walk through ponds because they are shallow, and it just slows them down. Or you could try and make swimming a thing.
Aquifers: Located beneath the map is an aquifer. This water is less accessible, requiring wells to access, and electricity to pump up. Each well has a radius around it which it can pull water from. Aquifers have a finite amount of water and dry up, in order to replenish them rain is required. Different terrain types have different levels of absorbancy which determines the starting amount of water in the aquifer at that spot, as well as the rate at which the aquifer replenishes at that spot. So for instance, as the start of the game the spaces beneath the stone tiling would have no water, and would not replenish during rain due to the rain water unable to permeate through the stone tiles.
Underground Lakes: these are randomly dispersed through the map and are accessed the same way as aquifers. You don't know where an underground lake is unless you hit it by chance.

Needs
Colonists: have a thirst meter similar to the hunger meter. When a colonist is thirsty they will attempt to drink from their canteen. If their canteen is empty they will go to a water source and fill it up. Dehydration works like hunger, but is more critical. Drinking must be done more often, but is much quicker than eating.
Plants: Plants also have a thirst meter. Plants use up a small amount of water each day, as well as a significant amount of water each time they grow a stage. When their thirst meter gets too low they become wilted and die.

Structures
Pipes: transports water like power conduits transport electricity. Instead of connectivity they have water pressure.
Pump: place over an above ground water source, it transmits water to the pumps.
Well: taps into any below ground water source and transmits to pipes.
Sink: must be connected to pipe with a certain amount of water pressure. Colonists can refill canteens at sink.
Sprinklers: Like a production building with a built in finite ingredient search radius. Sprinklers have two options, water plants, and put out fires. Both options could be set to infinity as long as dehydrated plants and fire are in the radius around the sprinkler. That way, whenever a fire pops up a colonist who is a firefighter can walk over to the sprinkler and turn it on until all the fires within the radius are extinguished, same with a grower and dehydrated plants. Similar to how lights become dimmer when there is less power available to them(or am I imagining this?) the radius of the sprinkler could decrease as water pressure in the pipes attached to them decreases.
Aquaponics benches: these now require water.

Technologies
Directed sprinklers: instead of blasting water 360˚ around it, these sprinklers function more like a turret. Looking for a plant that needs watering or a fire that needs extinguishing, and then shoots water at that tile only, saving water.
Pervious concrete: special concrete made with few fine aggregates, allowing small channels and pores in the concrete to form and let water permeate through and recharge the aquifer below. When pervious concrete gets dirty though it losses its porosity. So if it becomes dirty it will absorb less rainwater unless a colonist cleans it.
Sonic exploration: allows colonists to see the location of underground lakes.

I like the building modification idea. Perhaps new objects could be created such as "Stone wall w/ power conduit" and whenever your character builds a power conduit over a stone wall it just replaces the stone wall with the new "Stone wall w/ power conduit" object. In general I like the idea of building onto and modifying existing structures. I can envision things like adding on a tracker to your solar panels so that they follow the sun as it moves, or adding a table cloth to your table.

Pretty useful actually. To test just have a colonist throwing a molotov cocktail or shooting an inferno cannon at something, then have another colonist throwing frag grenades at the resulting fires. The frag grenades put out the fires in their explosion radius, making it a decent way to put out large fires if they aren't next to something important...

I was thinking earlier that ditches could be added, they would slow down movement when going through them and would make units more vulnerable to being attacked. Perhaps in the late game you could add in draw bridges which allow colonists to cross ditches, but can be risen when under attack to prevent enemies from using. At this stage in the game though I think any improvements to defense would make it to easy to turtle as the enemies aren't very sophisticated at attacking.

Question, why are diseases and illnesses both listed?

Also, thanks for the updated list.

Pretty much having a second level (or more) with more valuable  metals like actual Silver deposits and Uranium, maybe even other metals/crystals.

I say Uranium as I feel nuclear power will be in obviously eventually, but having uranium as a mineable thing for those players that don't want to do trade (as a challenge?) so they can use nuclear power. Also silver, whilst easy to get hold of when your set up and trading and only useful for buying stuff.

I agree that we should eventually have more things mineable than just metal, and silver and uranium would be natural choices to add. I would like it if since they are already introducing uranium, they may as well make as much use out of it as they can and give additional uses. Depleted uranium has many applications, it's density, cheapness, and ease of working with make it commonly used for vehicle armor, inertial guidance systems and in gyroscopic compasses. It's density makes it better than lead at blocking radiation, and is used in medical radiation therapies. It can be used to make dyes, including dyes with important applications in electron microscopy. The most practical way I could see it being incorporated is making depleted uranium a requirement for high tech vehicles for armor if armored vehicles ever get introduced, but it could just be added to a lot of random high tech things.

Now the crystals.

I really feel like there are a lot of potential, realistic materials that could fulfill these functions, such as platinum, without risking appearing to copy Dwarf Fortress

A final thing that I have never noticed or found is when digging into mountains, I have never found steam vents/geysers hidden away.

Just keep digging It's pretty variable about whether you will find something, but you can discover "hidden areas" within mountains when you are digging and you can find steam geysers. I think, but am not sure, that the game spawns a certain number of steam geysers, and doesn't take into consideration whether or not some, all, or none of those geysers are under mountains or not.

@Pulaskimask
Thought you might like to know that I made a mod for "Rats chewing on wires": http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=3791.0

Thanks for letting me know, this makes me happy

I really like the idea of putting the fire inside the squares to show you their passions. I also would really like to see the level each colonists has in their respective skills right beside those boxes.