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the way i understand raids and manhunter events (be it normal ones or on caravans) is that they completely depend on your story teller, difficulty and your local wealth.
the one difference i have read about is that caravans on roads meet more people than in the wilderness, also if you're close to a certain village, be it traders or enemies. i assume that whenever an event happens rng determines which of the 5 or so factions it is. if it is a friendly one, they are either visitors or traders. if it is a hostile faction you get a raid. so good relationships also help here.

i do not understand what the stealth number stands for, though.

ps: honestly, generally i dont feel a difference in meeting friendlies along the way or getting manhunters on my tail or even raids. this is why i dont really care about safe routes (because i dont understand them) so i just choose the quickest route and take less stuff and troops with me. (food, colonists and their gear also count as wealth, afterall (i believe))

the problem lies in the ai. it for the most part focuses the whole attack force on one point with only very few going astray and attacking random stuff, like your outside energy generators and the most random cables.

especially larger attacks in numbers would in my opinion profit from the real life tactics of not attacking a single spot but multiple ones at once. like for example if you built a fortress, it will always seem as if the enemy wanted to attack the same damn door. with this change the enemy would attack the whole side of the fortress and therefore split up accordingly. the more pawns participate in the attack, the larger this front would be until at some point the enemy could completely surround your base and attack countless points at once. sure, it would be EVEN harder for you, but since the enemy enters from one point of the map, they'd have to split up and you had the opportunity to pick off some of them this way better.

(and maybe even set the whole area/building ablaze with a coordinated fire starting command. they could send a wall of flames towards you. while first cutting grass on the other side so that it doesnt spread the wrong way too far. but this is probably too advanced)

but that would make the best weapon to deal with late game attacks (the minigun) useless, so maybe not. a successful surrounding of your base would also make it nigh impossible for you to survive (without appropriate gun nests positionned and multiple outside walls without doors and stuff) maybe it would invite for more doorway fights than there already are, so maybe definitely no...dunno.

thanks, though i didnt know about their weakness in blunt damage, i already have lots of steel club wielding pawns and battle beasts. still is hard to cope with them as they are quick and strong. also you cant just sit them out like a manhunting pack (which are also vulnerable to guns).

and fire in my opinion is cheesing the game...i know you can just put wooden flooring in all cave complexes to molotov them, but that really isnt the meaning behind them in my opinion...the game has various weaknesses in ai, no need to abuse them. more fun that way. i also dont get cheaters and hackers. but that's just me. (and mostly concerns other games.

Not sure how purging giant insects with fire is cheating? The traps pathing sure, but shooting incendiary launchers and molotovs at them is both effective and can be quite risky. Making the area they might spawn in extra flammable is just being prepared. The issue is there is not really much blunt damage that is ranged, but fire is both ranged-capable and effective at fighting bugs. Blunt damage is very efective but obviously those bugs are nasty in melee, so it's risky.
Ideally you want a brawler (who has some pets) with a mace, rather than a club, and the mace should be made out of silver or uranium to get bonus blunt damage. If you're using clubs, making it out of jade (or uranium/silver) can also get bonus blunt damage. When you select building materials, you can press the info tab to see how using that material will affect the melee weapon. Plasteel, for example, is a great option for making sharp weapons, while uranium is your best bet for a metal to make your maces from.

i didnt say it was cheating. but cheese. i dont like either.
and it is cheese in that the ai has no real defence against fire. granted, i havent tried fire against raiders extensively, but if the fire doesnt just randomly go out by itself most enemies and even allied pawns will just burn to a crisp with nothing else of you to do. fires in caves arent problems either, so you can just let it burn down by itself, no fear of forest fires.
sure, i know there are better weapons, but i also have to look out for the efficiency of things. cant spend money on jade only to make an awful club out of it. rather take the good steel clubs that get dropped by raiders regularly.
generally it is easiest to deal with bug hives in my experience by rushing them with all your troops and animals. if only few bugs spawn, only few can attack you, afterall. in other playthroughs i have left them alive when they were near entrances of the map especially when it is an often used road for traders and visitors, or even raiders. unfortunately that doesnt happen often and they have a high tendency to obstruct you in your daily business and to get out of hand.

i once built a killbox. playing with it was so boring that i closed it off. i wanted to keep it around for if a raid gets out of control, but i could never get myself to cheese again. so it just sits around. instead, in that late game colony i focussed on selling as many useless things and upgrading what i could in a way that my colony welath wouldnt increase but the overall usefulness of structures, objects and even gear. for example i try to keep morale very high so that i can make my pawns wear deadman's armor for good defence and low wealth at the same time. some pawns work better with this than others, obviously. also means i cant just constantly generate wealth and upgrade medics by stealing and selling organs. i also have to release tons of prisoners that are useless without touching them.

i guess you can try what i did or something, or just start many savegames and eventually abandon them.
or you play the game the way it was intended to be played: flee the planet as soon as possible. either by making a long caravan, or by researching and building a spaceship. :/

hail
happens only when it's warm.
cools current temperature by a couple degrees for the time and a few hours afterwards. destroys/damages plants.
i didnt check, but i think different crops (especially) have different hp.
in my opinion it shouldnt destroy grass and moss and stuff, but damage trees slightly. natural bushes and plants get medium damage but crops suffer the largest damage and commonly get destroyed.

how can you defend against it? quickly build a roof over unroofed crops. harvesting is usually too slow for this task. you can remove the roof afterwards again. roofing symbolizes when in our world people put umbrellas and stuff over their plants in their gardens.
long term defence against it is hydroponics.

thanks, though i didnt know about their weakness in blunt damage, i already have lots of steel club wielding pawns and battle beasts. still is hard to cope with them as they are quick and strong. also you cant just sit them out like a manhunting pack (which are also vulnerable to guns).

and fire in my opinion is cheesing the game...i know you can just put wooden flooring in all cave complexes to molotov them, but that really isnt the meaning behind them in my opinion...the game has various weaknesses in ai, no need to abuse them. more fun that way. i also dont get cheaters and hackers. but that's just me. (and mostly concerns other games.

not abduct them and make them suffer stockholm syndrome.

It's not stockholm syndrome, they just explain how wonderful this colony that harvests organs is and build up trust. I mean, half the time the prisoner was someone that just tried to kill them, it takes a lot of time to become trustworthy after that.

That said, the relationship between recent prisoner/warden is always the best because it's the only consistent way to make pawns socialize positively :X

q.e.d.

afaik most of these arent problems as of now or cant be changed by the devs anytime soon
-pawns will only take "last meals" if there is no doc available the way it seems to me. if they are more or less alright and not die in say half a day, they will get up to go get food so that they can ear more quickly and not reserve the medics. they will do this also when they are sick or already tended to. actually dying pawns never did this when i had docs around at least.
-the wood chuck probably has the same problem. no food available, so he will do the next most important thing: tending to his bruises.
-you can set work areas if you would like to. deconstructing ancient buildings i do first to get around this issue and only then removing floor tiles, as they are blocked by the walls anyway. isnt the most efficient way of doing things, but then again, almost nothing in the game is. at least it is less disturbing. the most efficient way to get rid of inefficiencies is playing on small maps anyway...or having specialists. since pawns lose xp once their skill is past lvl 10, you cant really have pawns that do everything. rather have a very few that excel at stuff. i guess the easiest is to have a researcher at lvl 20 that doesnt do anything else. just make sure the scientist has burning passion, then even a lvl 0 researcher turns into a Albert Einstein in no time. having your worst shots as the only hunters is also a good way of leveling them up if you dont have shooting ranges. and i could go on
-put an hour or two of anything before bed time so that they can finish their work and make them otherwise mostly work. maybe give them a siesta if you're in a warm climate, otherwise like Rihanna said: workworkworkworkwork
-the game was made to be mostly played in vanilla. mods you add are in your own responsibility. or in the modder's. cant really fault the game for it.
-we already have friendly crashing ship parts. droppods with food and stuff and massacred colonists.
-fighting factions are already a thing arent they?
-yeah, walls and doors are a bit underpowered in rimworld, but isnt it intended? otherwise it would have to take much longer to build them...just think of them as japanese paper thin buildings. civilized people will use the doors and not break through the walls and patiently await you outside the salloon to shoot you in the big market square. fits the cowboy style of the game pretty well.
-why not sell it? just keep it outside in a roofed area. doesnt look nice, but maybe you're lucky and some smart raiders will steal them instead. i always have a large area outside my walls dedicated to useless stuff( that are for sale)
-it's quite obvious to me that the economy isnt supposed to work like that. if you need something that you cant produce yourself or you need it badly, buy it off a trader. otherwise, DIY. only produce goods for sale that actually gain a lot in worth after making them. statues for example. hunt for elephants and thrumbos and butcher them, operate on scythers. sell arms and armor that you scavenged and dont need and only produce what you really need. buy neutroamine and produce medicine instead of buying medicine if you can. ingame economy is meant to get wealth away from your colony and not to produce more. you can also use traders to get rid of unwanted items that you only built to improve certain skills or to get a better item, like when you try to upgrade sleeping conditions to excellent and you sell your good beds.
-to me, caravans are really worth it once i have multiple places to go to. i usually take a group of 5 so that they can prepare quickly and still dont eat that much. i guess preparing for caravans does require some trial and error or experience. but as said, 2 resource caches and maybe a good deal (not 5000 agave fruit. that is just too annoying. but maybe 42 knives like i got it recently, or 700 cloth and what not.) i would enjoy simpler deals in the beginning though. maybe 300 berries for a telescope, or an early tube tv. anyway, in the end i constantly have a caravan on the map doing deals and plundering pirates and so on.
-you can stop giving your prisoners food and instead make a 1 tile square of food just for them to take by themselves. much more efficient with large numbers of them anyway.
-WOWOWOWOW. ok, dude, calm down. no need to tell the fbi you enjoy killing people like jeez but seriously, most non-psychos out there dont like the sight of death.

darn. i wrote a whole lot. sorry if it doesnt look very nice or if it isnt very comprehensible. it's just that you made some many suggestions and it is hard to answer them all without spamming. pretty sure many of your points have been made before though, so i didnt answer all of the points you made, hope this helps anyway

not sure why my tribe would research denim. by the time i can i have scavenged tons of proper armor, be it breastplates, devilstrand clothes or i guess denim clothes. every now and then i'd get good helmets and maybe even power armor.
then again tribal research is flawed by default and that's another topic

this was actually one of the first things i wanted to write about, but most things have been said

overall i can only say that the current system is unbalanced. not too badly, but it seems to me as if two pawns that dont currently like eachother that much will never ever get a good relationship or just not hate eachother's guts.
i think it's a bit silly that the game practically forces you to arrest pawns and make all pawns wardens that hate that person (or vice versa) and chat with them until they are besties. i dont know about you guys, but that's not how i make friends. when i changed schools i tried to eat with my new class mates in the canteen as often as possible, hang out with them in our free time, give them lil presents and stuff. not abduct them and make them suffer stockholm syndrome.

pretty sure night hunting is inefficient due to simple algorithms. whenever i catch my night owls hunting i draft them and send them right next to the animal they wanna hunt. more often than not the first shot hits and very surprisingly often small animals get one-shot. large animals are a bit easier to hit anyway, so even if at night you can just wake them up with a point blank shot to their butt and let them run around in a frenzy. most hunters shoot just good enough to not let them go to sleep anymore, so you can undraft those pawns and they will usually go straight back to hunting and shoot the wounded animal

still, would be nice if the ai did this on his own. laying animals should ALWAYS be shot from point blank range (except the explody type), no matter if asleep, healing, downed or unconscious.

seems like you havent had enough trouble with bugs yet
try playing on a higher difficulty or on a map with lotsa mountains. i always do and the bugs are enough trouble as is. if it was a different animal or i don't know what else, yeh, ok, maybe, otherwise thanks but no thanks