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The OP is clearly missing a kind reminder of the presence of the dreaded Search functionnality.

You might as well add the resources on your list.
I've seen a lot of videos with people having $20K+, with food and metal in huge quantities as well.
That's probably only requiring some tweaking (as Tynan is already doing), but in any case, a way to alleviate that would be for the AI to target structures, for instance, as then the player would have to rebuild...
But that's most likely what we'll see once the shitload of events get incorporated into the game.

I know, I'm in the process of reworking the pages (I'll probably start tomorrow), and putting up a mimic of the in-game architect menu.

Interesting details, but RimWorld is *not* a simulator, so don't expect too much in terms of real-like likeness.
Anything integrated to the game is to support the story and has a fun gameplay (or at least not an exaggerated one).

Well, if that's what you *want*, so be it.
I don't like it much, though, that's too dense.

Well, *you* don't want that.
Doesn't mean everybody else does as well.

As long as you ask people to discuss about their opinion of a part of the gameplay, it will most likely differ to that of Tynan's, thus becoming suggestions

Regarding the time spent in battles, I'll give you a "false" answer: it depends on which AI you choose.
Testers might be able to be more specifics with their own experiences.

The first thing I think is that this thread belongs to the Suggestions sub-forum

For the second thing... I already touched on the subject of colonists control.
My point is that the game might get kind of boring if all we have to do in the game is from a distant perspective, as it is already for the most part: we pinpoint things/areas to build/clean/repair/mine/whatever, and, depending on the colonists' allowed skills (and their priorities), they do it at their earliest convenience.
We're not in the action, we are following the story.

Now, the battles are different.
Once we draft colonists, we are in control.
The colonist are doing what we order as we order it.
We have a direct incidence on the story.
We *are* the story.

Of course, it can become a mess with too many colonists to handle, but I do like the idea of that part of the challenge.

In the end, I'm not advocating that every (non-drafted) action should be totally controllable by us, but I think it's important to keep a part of the game were we are more than tinkering bystanders.

The problem with the colonist being able to step on the traps is that you don't control exactly where they walk.
When they do their tasks, they walk all over the place, and can step on just about any tile the pathfinding system will guide them through.
When they're drafted, it's the same, only *you* tell them which tile to ultimately stop at.

So colonists would have to watch out of traps all the time, or not at all, in which case you'll probably get a lot of casualties.
An idea would be to say that if a trap is in a home zone, the colonists will know it's there and thus avoid it.
But out of the home zone... anything could happen.
You could also still drag a drafted colonist directly into a trap, even in your home zone, but... that would be mean !

About the weapons, I'd rather have a way to get rid of them (deconstruct to get some metal back ? research the most advanced ones to help in creating future weapons/turrets/defenses/whatever ?) than being able to stockpile them 'till kingdom come...

Mortars would be like grenades with higher range, so I guess that's OK.
Stuff from above the atmosphere, I still think/feel doesn't belong to the western-y, lost at sea vibe.
And that's probably over-powered anyway (and if it's not... then what's the point ?).

The overview is taking suggestions here, so please focus that specific discussion there.

About the alert levels, while there's some merit to it, what bothers me is that it would bring yet other things to be automatized...
The more you automatize, the less you directly control.
The way I understand it, when there's no threat around, you tell your colonist to do specific actions now and then (mine, build...), and the rest of the time, they manage their actions on their own according to their settings.
Then there's combat, and that's when you are in full control, and not just administering from afar.
I think that's an important thing to keep, else the game will just be a hive-managing game, where you look at it from time to time, and possibly give some orders, and that's it.

We're still in dire need of a proper and clean dark/black skin for MediaWiki.
Or someone that has mad css skillz...

But then you're not in a stranded colony anymore, are you ?

Even if there's some controversy about it, you *are* stranded, and the only contact you have with the exterior is a short time-window with the odd ship passing by.
They don't linger.

Also, RimWorld is about experiencing stories with your colonists.
Having stuff happening from out of the screen would just seem odd.

From what I've seen, there are a number of times players will want to draft multiple colonists. Letting them do so with one click instead of many seems like a worthwhile optimization.

Since there's a hotkey for the drafting, maybe you can already select multiple colonists and hit the hotkey (or click the corresponding button).
Any tester to confirm or infirm that ?