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The main goal is to create interesting, dramatic events, which may sometimes include combinations of very destructive or near-unbeatable events.

That's a good point, and I do really appreciate that goal.  That being said, at the moment it seems less "sometimes" combinations of unbeatable events and more "almost-always" combinations of unbeatable events.  Perhaps I'm just "lucky" with the spice!

I'd go so far to say that if you're playing RimWorld to win, you're playing it with the wrong mindset. nja's story is tragic, but in a certain light it's also hilarious. This is the "losing is fun" mindset from Dwarf Fortress.

Heh, I hadn't thought of looking at it in that way.  I imagine I'll move more in that direction once the dialog and art style is updated.  Looking forward to it!  Emergent narratives bordering on the amusing are a good thing.

My first response to these kinds of situations actually isn't to try to make Cassie smarter, it'll be to create events that are less terminal. Raiders that leave before killing everyone, or who can be paid off if you can't handle them. In the terminology I use in my game design book, I'd like to create more elastic failure conditions so the colony can take more hits before the game ends, thus dragging out the drama.

That sounds like a very reasonable thing to do, and I appreciate your work on it.  Please don't take my comments as any sort of hatred of the game --- it's a pre-alpha and it is amazing for what it is!  That being said, more "elastic failure conditions" will likely lessen the frustration and allow for more enjoyment, to the benefit of all!

You definatly aren't the only lucky one. Last try on cassandra classic ended with me getting attacked by 6 raiders, one of which had grenades, when I had 1 turret which was taken out moments before the attack with a solar flare, 2 living colonists(neither fully healed after the last raid) and 1 prisoner(which I hadn't had time for to recruit, because I was too busy with deal with a crop blight). Retried it a couple of times using older autosaves, same result everytime.

Less terminal events seem like a nice idea, as long as it doesn't also make the events harder.(like instead of the first raider wave being a single guy with a pistol, now it's 2 with pistols) It would give you more opportunity to struggle.

They are heavily adaptive, actually. Cassandra is mostly just adaptive, the ramp-up aspect is quite small.

However, she's still not a genius. E.g. you'll get strong raider attacks if you have lots of turrets even if they're not powered and you have one colonist alive, because she's cueing off the turret count. Some of that randomness is okay, but not too much. I want to make her cleverer.

Perhaps you could make her take in account wether the solar flare event is active or not, and then make her ignore turrets in her count if the event is active. Shouldn't be more than one or two lines of extra code, depending on how exactly it's coded of course.

Perhaps if she took into account the amount of power the colony has, or, even better, the total amount of power that could be allotted to the turrets. Sort of an "All power to forward shields" sort of situation. So she'd count the amount of power each turret takes to operate and then looks at how much power you are producing/ have stored in cells and says to herself, "Well. If they shut off all of their doors, lights, and food supplies, they can get that 4th turret online too. TWELVE PALS ENJOY."

It doesn't make much sense. Current system is more realistic - raiders look at your base from orbit - see lots of guns - send lots of raiders. Lesson for player: Never deploy turrets unless you can actually power them.
Besides - it still doesn't make sense, cause raids sometimes happen during the night or eclipse - and if your colony is purely solar-powered than this calculation is failed, because you can be with no power during raid deployment, but full on when raid attacks you. Or the other way around. So whatever it'd try to balance - it won't. It's better to just force player into powering turrets 100% of time - if he looses he will be the only one to blame for that.

Not entirely he mentions the total power that could be alloted to turrets, solar generators have a energy output of exactly 0 during the night or an eclipse and thus can allot 0 power to turrets.
And as far as the raiders looking down and seeing your defences, well it's a game not everything has to make sense, balance in my opinion is more important.

That'd be nice; problem is there's no way to make more stone once you've used every boulder on the map for paving bricks. I'd like this idea, though, making nice-looking paving-stone floors out of stone. As it is, your options are ugly and utilitarian, or pretty carpet, which doesn't really belong outdoors, does it? (Though painting the killbox red should help hide the bloodstains!)

I think it's safe to assume that more floorings will be coming. Don't fret about it, it's an alpha. I think it's more annoying that we only have the paste or raw food as edibles, both of which are negative towards happiness.(could at least temporarly have set the happyness to 0 for the paste, till there was an alternative)

Alternatively, do it similarly to CubeWorld, where the increases in skill bonuses and power level are subject to exponential decay. This acts as a soft cap where the final cumulative bonus will converge to some value.

(Example.)

Or you could use a flat increase, but scaling research doubling the cost every research for example.(10K->20K->40K->80K->160K) Making each new tier of research harder and harder to get, even when your research force increases in efficiency per person and total numbers.

Seems rather busy for the "rim of the galaxy", lots of trading ships and raiders anyways. In any case, there are more ways to transport information than through physical transport with the ship. You can send it across the void of space via electromagnetic radiation,(radio waves, light, etc.) Relaying it from the ship to a chain of sattalites till it ends up at it's destination. Though a colony like the one you build would most likely not have the ability to build a transmitter powerfull enough, lack the power supply to use it and/or not know which way to point the transmitter for the sattalite.(whereas larger trading vessels are able to) Of course transmitting messeges this way will still take time, afterall it still takes 5 minutes for light from the sun to reach earth.

Besides that all, it's a game. And sometimes in games, they set asside realism to add game mechanics.(which basically they already did a bit seeing as how busy these colonies on the edge of the galaxy are, with all the raiders and traders that just happen to be in the neighbourhood)

While I love this idea, I really do, there's one thing in the back of my mind.

Why would a ship that cares enough to deliver a message back home not do something about rescuing you?

Though, if it were done for a fee, that could work.

The same why exists when thinking about them trading with you. Why won't they do something to rescue this colony of stranded astronauts? Why can't you pay them to pick you up and bring you to the nearest civilized planet? I mean it's not like they can't pick up stuff from the surface of the planet, I've send them tons and tons of food and weapons.

It's a bit like a series about being lost on an uninhabited island. They don't build a boat and use that to escape the island, even when they have the capability and resources to do so, because that'll end the series. It's a bit of immersion breaking you'll just have to take if you don't want the game to end as soon as you have a good sum of money and a comms system.

Use mountains as walls. I could construct a U shaped building with the top attaching to a mountain and it count as an indoor location.

That already is in the game, it will take the mountain wall as the fourth wall of the building, unless you made it too large, then the roofing will collapse and create rubble.

Burning paste. Exactly the way you'd imagine. Just some nutrient paste from the dispenser poured over the ground to create a highly flammable trap that can be ignited by anything that will cause fire(molotovs, charge rifles, lightning, nearby fire, etc.) and will quickly spread to adjecent tiles of burning paste.

So you are stranded on some moon orbiting around a gas giant somewhere in the infinite expanse of the universe. Surely after you managed to get communications with close by ships you'd want to send your family and friends the messege that you are alive and well. And of course after that initial messege you'd also want to occaisionally get letters from them and write some of your own, to keep in touch.
So why not call in the help of said passing ships, and put the hearts of your survivors at ease. I am sure they will relay your messege, for a small fee.

I agree there should be an easier way. Some building to handle the destruction of unwanted materials. It however shouldn't be available without some research though.

The current way of destroying debris and corpses is less than effective, and involved the use of several blasting charges around dumping grounds. Which in my oppinion is both wastefull of the metal and quite dangerous.