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["Absolute Three"]

It is not too difficult to create a freezer that will reach "Absolute Three", but only briefly.  The best I was able to achieve was just with a 1 tile room and have the fluctuations max-out at 29K.

The trouble seems to be that absolute-three is as low as the temperature will ever get, so there's no way to stabilize at that temperature because all cooling stops when it is reached, and so it immediately begins to equilibrate with the environment.  Adding more coolers, regardless of the configuration, seems to have little to no effect on stamping out these fluctuations.

Doorways into freezer-rooms seem to be MAJOR sources of heat leakage.  A room that can reliably touch 3K will bottom out at 15K if you add a triple-layer door to access it.  I might try creating a super-cooled Anteroom to the main freezer to suck up heat before it can leak in, but still allow walking.

Doors do have an interesting side effect though.  Doors can act as temperature moderators and a door inside a room against the corner can give you a better view of that room's average temperature.  I would propose then that the standard way of defining the temperature that you have achieved in a room be the "Door Temperature"; the temperature of a door sitting in the middle of the room.

Ok, here's my "Branching Cooler" prototype:

The central cooling room (Topmost) reaches 3K occasionally, but quickly fluctuates to 22K and 33K.  I think 22K is its likely "true" temperature.  The outer coolers are performing at a delta-T of around 117^o, with their rooms being cooled to 179 Kelvin.

It is 296K outside at the moment (not particularly hot, but certainly not cold).  I didn't extinguish the brush fire nearby because I thought it drove home the point nicely that I am getting NO help from the environment in this cooling endeavor.  Fueled Generators, Walls, and Coolers are of course dev-moded in.

The "Real" test in my mind is to see if I can apply this technique to a 3x3 room (the smallest room I consider a true room) which a pawn can walk into and out of.  I may dabble with multi-door pathways that turn corners, because I know heat is only conducted in straight lines.

They should have a chance to watch a campfire instead, or go watch forest fire.

Watching things burn should be a joy activity like stargazing or passionate labor.

I had a mod back in A15 that gave most diseases a vector.
Insectoids were the primary vector for all forms of parasitic diseases. (Malaria, Sleeping Sickness, Gut Worms, Muscle Parasite)
Rat bites spread the plague.
Mechanoid shots had a chance of injecting a colonist with mechanites.
It wasn't perfect, but I preferred having cause over randomness by a long shot.

I'm a huge fan of the idea of filth increasing the chance of diseases like plague and the flu. It's really simple and adds a meaningful dimension to the disease mechanic.
I've said it before so many times, but I would also love a communicable disease system
Asymptomatic raiders/caravan members subjecting newly landed colonists to local disease just sounds so good to me.

That all sounds pretty cool.  Communicable diseases would be funny if you could try to deliberately spread plagues...

But I agree that cause-and-effect is always good to have.  It always bothered me that 3 out of 6 colonists might come down with the flu several weeks after any visitors.  Not only does it come from nowhere, but how do only HALF of the people in a cramped shack on the ice get sick?

I did some dev-mode testing of various freezer configurations and I found that a single Cooler acting on a 1-room tile will hit its Delta-T limit.

I also found that if you make a chain of 1-tile cooler rooms, the first will run close to its delta-T max, but the 4th and 5th in the series actually EXCEED environmental temperatures.  It seems a cooler can create more heat than it can actually pump out.  I think if you make each cooler feed into 2 other coolers (forming a branching tree) you should be able to pump away the heat fast enough and achieve a lower temperature.  One configuration I was messing with seemed to be able to reach 17^oK in 310^oK arid shrubland, but it would also show 60^oK sometimes.

From my observations of heat, I believe that temperature calculation are done every ~1 second, but every room and every heating/cooling device is on a slightly different schedule to spread the computational load.  This works fine on average, but for generating large temperature differentials with a small thermal mass, it would give rise to significant temperature fluctuations.

The difference is that the necessity of those things isn't concealed, and they can all be provided domestically.  Bad luck with traders can mean no meds at all.  Death can be caused by being short on cash over a year ago.

This is what makes it feel more "unfair" than other mechanics, whether it is balanced or not.

["Not fatal? Not a problem!"]

I just set them to no-medicine treatment and let them stop by the hospital whenever they need treatment and want to train up my doctors.

I haven't tried to prolong it by denying them medical treatment, though I did get it on one of my soldiers once and with the enhanced Movement and Manipulation he became REALLY good at kiting and shooting Centipedes with a sniper rifle.  Was a little disappointed when he recovered, since he was Sanguine and could handle the mood penalty.

But as diseases go, it's not bad.  It's not fatal, and the worst effect is just having a colonist be unhappy for a season or so, similar to the death of a friend or relative.  Ok, that probably didn't make it sound any better, but I've been playing a bunch of harsh scenarios and so my mentality has become: "Not fatal? Not a problem!"

Compared with things like Raw Cannibalism, Starvation, Chronic Pain, or Psychic Drones, the penalty for euthanasia is actually pretty mild.  I think it's just like -3 for 6 days, so long as nobody was actually friends with said colonist.

Pro Tip: If a mechanoid siege shoots a Thrumbo, the Thrumbo goes manhunter on YOU!!!

Have you checked already if there are any resources left after you burn it in a crematorium?

On the sea-ice, I didn't have enough spare materials to build a crematorium just to "find out".  I also miss the ability to decompose Stone Clubs back into useful stone, even though that was a bit weird for a "smelter" to do.  Calling it a "Recyclotron" might work.

Is that legit, or do I have to do it full random?

Its not strictly in line with the rules... but I guess the first time you did it, it was a random roll.... so in this case I think I can make an exception

It reminds me of this xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/221/
If it was random once, isn't it random forever?

I actually had to restart at that location 4 times due to food and disease issues.  There is no crop or wild forage in Extreme Desert that will mature before you starve to death, so hunting is required.  A steel shiv is quick and easy to make, but Iguanas and Scarabs will cut you and condemn you to death by infection, and Dromedaries are very big.  "Poppy Barron" (good stats but two addictions) was able to take down a dromedary on her attempt while high on Go-Juice, but she had to limp back to base somehow carrying an adult camel with a broken arm and leg.  Starved to death after she was unable to harvest her gravel-potatoes due to a nasty case of "the shakes" from simultaneous Alcohol and Go-Juice withdrawal.

Winning play: After planting 20+ potatoes, chop 30 wood from 4-5 Saguaro cactuses scattered around the map(can be harvested at 20% growth for 5 wood) and make a Short Bow.  Use short bow to hunt a dromedary to avoid starving to death before your crops mature.  Scrounge together 20 more wood (and mine steel) to build a Butcher's Table to process the camel corpse into fresh meat before it goes rotten.  A wanderer joins around this time and your potato crop comes in and if you're lucky you can spare the time and steel for a Solar Generator and Electric Stove to cook your potatoes into simple meals for better moods and nutrition.

...If you're not lucky, both colonists suffer simultaneous mental breaks and go wandering in a daze while a raider with a rusty shiv strolls in and stabs Anna "Princess" Roslav (medieval lordling who I was role-playing as trying to start up a new kingdom from exile) 17 different times before she smashes his face in.  Multiple stab wounds does not break her out of her daze, and she keeps wandering until fainting from blood loss while the other colonist is still in la-la-land half a map away.

Does your "no mods" rule even extend to pure UI mods?  I'm using Moody, Medical Tab, and World Without Hat.  These have no in-game effect except making my life easier, not my pawns.

Good question. I guess UI mods dont make the GAME easier, so if they are the only mods I'll allow it

I was pretty sure those would be ok, but I unloaded stuff like "Auto-Flicking" (lets colonists turn sun lamps on and off at the right times) and "Re-ordered Work Priorities" and "Look at me I'm the Worker Now", and "Quality Builder".  These don't change what can happen in the game, but do change the sorts of orders you can give.  Thus they could violate the spirit of the challenge.

I may have already done that though restarting the same scenario 5 times, but I could rationalize it in my head given that I didn't choose it the first time and nearly ANY other starting location could be easier!  As extreme deserts go though, this was pretty wimpy since the winter temperatures didn't even require a hat to be comfortable!

I did decide to add an additional restriction to my playthrough which I felt was implied by your challenge but didn't seem to be specifically stated:  The husky must survive.  No butchering it for meat and eliminating surplus mouths.  Must protect it from dangers.  Mine is currently still alive with a damaged right eye from friendly fire (shoddy machine-pistol) after it saved the colony by tackling a pirate who had downed two of my men with an SMG.  Emergency medical treatment saved its life, but the enemy rifleman that shot it in the guts fled to safety.

Christina "Princess" Daraby (another Medieval Lordling, with only social/crafting passions, minimal skills, but neurotic and industrious) and Oliver the Husky (with one and a half eyeballs) survive and remain the leaders of a 5-member colony which is currently in the grips of starvation-induce tantrums after a Thrumbo ate half my crops and a blight killed the other half.

..But still alive!

As far as I know there's no way to kick somebody out.  Death or kidnapping (hard to engineer) is the only way to reliably be rid of someone.

If you feel queasy about Euthanasia, you could make him form a one-man caravan and send him off to visit a Pirate base.

As for arresting people turning into fist-fights, I usually don't bother with a normal arrest for the dangerous psychotic breaks.  I draft the 3 nearest guys and order them all to melee-attack the colonist to beat some sense into him.  Colonists go down pretty quick with 3:1 odds, and so long as none of them had knives or spears, it's rarely life threatening.

Large numbers of small injuries heal pretty quickly and train up your doctors.  Bruises and cracks don't bleed and never seem to get infected.  Your "discipline squad" will usually have 2-3 bruises apiece but those are basically gone in a day or so.  Harm done during a psychotic episode doesn't seem to result in any relationship penalties the way friendly-fire incidents do.

The purpose of Non-Violent colonists is to wear a Personal Shield and run around like a headless chicken to drawn enemy fire.  They aren't cowards, they just refuse to bring harm to sentient beings (unless they go berserk).

You can try just changing the definition of the clothing profile that they are all set to.  Redefine "Anything" to mean Hats 'n Dusters during a heat wave, and change it back to cool weather garb after.  It's more complicated than ordering a single pawn to swap their outfits, but you only have to do it once to apply it to everybody.

A good Chef basically pulls their own weight in a colony.  Cooking is a frequent and omnipresent task if you're not going to be using Nutrient Paste Dispensers.

If he can reliably turn your farm products into delicious food, I see no reason why you shouldn't put up with his occasional psychotic episode.  Arresting him when he puts cooking fires in the wrong place doesn't seem like too much to ask.  Firefighting is the #1 priority of every colonist in my colony.

Unless you have a skilled chef lined up to replace him when he suffers an "unfortunate accident" (or you just add euthanasia to the surgery bills on his health tab), then you should appreciate what he CAN do for the colony, rather than what he can't. 

Find out what's bothering him and give him a better room (with less rock rubble and vomit stains) or fresh clothing or more recreation time, or even just a comfy chair in front of the stove when he's slaving away.