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It actually has a max temperature at which it's comfortable.
It's set to -8 in the files.
So between -8 and -45 it's comfortable.

Yes, they do currently reduce the maximum comfortable temperature. Realistically it should be much more, however. Those are offsets that the parka applies to the base comfortable temperatures of the colonist. Only reducing the maximum comfortable temperature by 8 degrees isn't much when you're wearing clothing that reduces your minimum by 45. We're talking realism here and not game balance at the moment.

The red and blue overlays for the new temperature devices should show you what they're affecting. The larger the room, the less effect each unit will have. Outside ambient plays a role as well. It's assuming equalization with the outside ambient occurs through the floor and roofs. This applies to caves as well.

You can estimate how much a heater can do on average, but experimentation is needed based on the map you're playing, what the outside ambient is, and what temperature you're trying to achieve.

As was said, doors always leak, especially when they're opened (makes sense). Climate controlled airlocks can help.

For an initial cut at implementing the concept of temperature I think the main reasons for the OP Parkas was to not totally break the colonist / raider / visitor AI. They allow for a stopgap to temporarily account for some possible shortcomings in the current AI to effectively deal with temperature extremities. Mechanics like temperature need to baby step their way into a game like this.

There's certainly some pawn AI for temperature reactions now, but these don't currently include the pawn dressing themselves etc. I think it would be cool if the colonists have an awareness of what they're wearing and seek to adapt to the surroundings, but that may not be trivial. Once that's in place, I think the clothing tolerances and effects can be tightened up somewhat. Something like a parka should really substantially decrease the maximum comfortable temperature as well, since they're probably not the best choice in summer in a hot environment. If that were the case, however, the player would currently need to change every colonists' clothing to avoid certain doom.

All this said, I think body temperature would be an excellent mechanic once the other systems are able to support it. This should hopefully address the overall issue of just leaving parkas on your colonists year-round in many environments with no consequences.

Perhaps visitors who are suffering health consequences due to heat/cold/starvation should enter a "frantically leaving" state, in which they will beat down any doors/walls necessary to leave the map.

That's a good idea for reasons even beyond this exploit.

Another way to address the exploit would be for visitors to register that they're barred from leaving the map, and take that as a hostile action. This probably makes more sense when the diplomacy functionality has matured further, however.

Perhaps post your save game and world file somewhere so someone can assist? Have you tried zooming out and dragging selection boxes everywhere to see if you scoop up the body?

The other option is to follow colonists around watching their thoughts and see when the penalty increases. Could substantially concentrate the search.

I usually build the ship, but only when the raiding parties start looking like they're getting too large. I also take into account how many fighting colonists I have at the ready, since I always seem to find myself with a richly built colony (that attracts larger raids) that's always short on colonists. Even with killing corridor entrances with overwhelming turrets,  I often find you still need colonists to turn the tide of certain attacks.

I usually play on Cassandra, however, which I think is an important distinction. Cassandra's storytelling difficulty curve is intended to be slowly increasing. This implies that eventually the negative events and raids thrown at the player will become unmanageable. I'm sure players have played a single colony longer than I have to know if that's currently the case in recent Alpha builds, but I'm making the assumption that once we move out of Alpha with balancing tunings etc., and after enough play, Cassandra will eventually take you down.

I haven't played much Randy at all, but perhaps the slowly increasing difficulty curve doesn't even apply. I know the word "random" appears in this Storyteller's name, but I'm not sure if there's still some difficulty curves in the background algorithm.

So I'm ultimately getting at that the endgame may depend on the storyteller selected. If Randy is truly random, there's no reason why you can't turn this into a survival game and hold out indefinitely as long as you can as your main goal. If Cassandra's intent is to eventually take you down, those players may have a goal to start the ship before they're overwhelmed.

In the end, this is a simulator, and this is the beauty of a simulation game. Perhaps some players want to see how long they can hold out on Cassandra, or perhaps others want to launch a ship as early as possible on Randy. They have that flexibility to set their own goals for a particular game. All Tynan has to do is open the possibility of additional game ending events, and perhaps acknowledge in-game the player's current survivability achievements. I believe the players will take it from there.

Absolutely agree!

If/when the planning tool is looked at again, I'd also suggest the ability to copy, move, and perhaps even rotate, an existing plan. This would bring a number of advantages to the player, especially when you drew your whole colony out, and realize you need to shift by a block or two. 

This is more personal, but I'd prefer if the planning tool laid plans down when left clicking, and removed them with right clicking. Deactivation of the tool could be via ESC or clicking the planning tool to deactivate it. I'd actually prefer if most of the zones worked this way as well. Having two commands to add and remove zoning is cumbersome to me.

If stockpile priorities are being used by the haulers to determine what order to collect items in, I think that, for me at least, another method of prioritizing hauling is needed even more badly than I originally thought.  I use stockpile priority to specify where I want items stored, not how soon I want them hauled.  For example, I usually have an indoor stockpile that is set to accept foodstuffs only and is set to Preferred, with a separate outside stockpile that will also accept food (and a bunch of other stuff) and is set to Normal.  That way, my indoor stockpile (which is strategically positioned right by the kitchen in order to speed up the cook's job) gets filled up first, and only any overflow food ends up getting stored outside.  Conversely, I don't do any such trick with my stockpiles for steel ... which may well explain why steel always seems to be the last thing my haulers decide to deal with.

I'd agree completely. I never considered hauling priorities would be influenced by stockpile importance. I also never tracked the situation that closely either. This would explain, however, why at times colonists would be obsessed with moving goods from one stockpile to a newly constructed, and higher priority stockpile. This comes up for me usually because I start the game with "catch-all" large stockpiles. Slowly as the game goes on, I'll create smaller higher priority stockpiles to bring the goods closer (such as the food in the kitchen example from Mystic, and putting medical kits in the room with medical beds etc.). I'd be curious to hear some theories, or Tynan's acknowledgement on exactly how this works. Behaviors like this I always dismissed as being driven again by proximity.

If this is indeed correct, I can think of situations where this makes sense, but also some that goes against the player's intent. As always, I feel exposing the options to the player is the best way to go. Another related topic has been colonist food consumption priorities, which have a few thread floating around (such as this one I posted in since it was easy to find).

No way to do this that I'm aware of. I also agree that the hauling priority seems to be selected by proximity of the colonist who's looking for their next job. Only way to really prioritize what you need is to micromanage what you flag for hauling or un-forbid. You'll need to notice when that task is done and manually flag or un-forbid more to get the order you want.

Having hauling jobs pile up can be addressed by adjusting the priorities of the colonist jobs. You'll need to select the manual priorities option, and have a few colonists prioritize hauling over many of the other tasks. You'll know you're in this mode if the checkboxes in the colonist / priorities list change to numbers. Unfortunately, we only have 4 tiers (numbers) to assign at the moment, which can be limiting if your intent is to essentially have some colonists take tasks in reverse to the universal priority.

There's no way through the standard interface for floors to be removed. The only way I've read about was that a fertilizer pump could be used for this purpose on previous alpha builds.

I also think there should be a floor destruction tool, or simply be able to place the original dirt material.

I think as another industry, it would be nice to be able to sell the bricks to passing traders. Having a stockpile of bricks in the early game is nice so you're ready to build those tough outer walls, shooting positions etc. In the mid to late game, however, they also take up too much space stockpiled and don't have enough building use (although they're much more space efficient than the rocks themselves since multiple rocks easily fit into a single stack of bricks).

We should probably make a distinction here. It has "felt" like growing specific crops in farming zones has slowed in recent builds (it may just be my imagination). Regardless, it does take a while, perhaps too long, for crops to crow in this manner. What grows too fast IMHO (and what my previous post was really speaking to) are the wild crops and bushes on the landscape. They can be harvested quite often, in large quantity and distribution on the map, and yield a large amount per harvest. The distinction may be that once harvested, the base plant remains presumably with some growth already there. When using the farming zone, the entire plant is removed. I haven't studied this close enough to see if this is a factor, namely whether additional yield comes out of the entire plant being removed or not.

Regarding the food availability, I'm inclined to agree that it's too easy to acquire in the temperature forest. Acquiring more raw food for cooking is usually as mundane as dragging the "harvest food" tool over your courtyard every once in a while. I don't think I've ever had to venture more than 20 spaces away from the front door of my main colony to find enough food from trimming natural plants. Only reason I build farms is to grow potatoes for selling. There isn't a whole lot of strategy surrounding this system in this biome at the moment.

Quickly considering the problem, the quantity of edible plants, the harvest quantity per plant, and the rate at which they grow are all factors. All things considered, I'd probably reduce their growth rate first and observe. This will at least force the players to venture a little farther from their base to harvest food, unless they invest the space and time into a managed farm.

I think you're describing something like alert states that has been recently brought up recently. In that thread, I linked some similar discussion regarding emergency zones, and finally my own suggestion of priority presets. I think the latter may be most applicable as I share the desire to be able to switch over the colonist priorities quickly to respond to certain conditions. A really fancy system would also have the colonists taking up certain positions with certain weapons.

I imagine trying to play your own game is something like trying to tickle yourself. Sure you can do it, but it's not really the same, you can't ever surprise yourself.

I'll probably never forget this analogy. Thanks.