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why not just have pawns drop stuff in the closest open space of a stockpile?

Yes, that would be the easiest approach, but...   the reason this is slightly less efficient and not as useful is because the pawn might be bringing something in from the field, say a bunch of berries, or a load of rice.  If he drops them in the closest space to the field then that space might be the furthest away from your kitchen.  You want the pawn to drop the berries in the farthest space in this case (the space closest to the kitchen) so that a later pawn hauling to the kitchen is more efficient. 

As I say, most stockpiles have an optimum direction from which to fill that the player has in mind when creating the pile.   It is almost trivial to sort the open storage spaces in the stockpile and have the pawn fill from one optimum direction.   Thus the suggestion.

@Lemonater47   Fair enough.  I envisioned that the runner would move much faster on the world map than normal, but I take your point.

@AileTheAlien   I like the idea of smoke signals! 

Also it's kinda bummer that You cannot call tribal for help because they dont have droppod technology - i would just expect them to come after day/two - so handling sieges/poison|psychic ships would be easier

The above quote is from the 1.0 thread under general discussions.

I have never asked a friendly tribe/ colony for help during a raid because I have few games under my belt where I have progressed to actually having a comm desk.  I like the early game so much that this has never bothered me.  And in those cases where I could communicate I forget that I have that option to call for help in the midst of planning for whatever sort of overwhelming raid or situation that is upon me.    Nevertheless, an idea worth sharing occurred to me after reading the above:

An interesting game mechanic for tribal would be to have the option to designate a pawn as a caravan "runner" to an adjacent friendly colony to seek help during a raid or other significant event.  That pawn would leave to the world map without gathering food or with minimal food, etc. and must go alone.  They would move at a very fast world speed and without rest because of the urgency of the assignment.  After arriving at the destination the runner would have the option to ask for help or return on his own (now starving and in a lot of trouble but perhaps still able to get home safely by the normal caravan rules).  If he asks for help, he would disappear from the world map and arrive WITH the assisting colony's forces a little later and from there resume his place in the colony on the home map.  I presume the assisting colony would feed and care for the runner on the return journey so they would arrive back in reasonable mood and condition. 

Proximity to friendly tribal colonies could become an important defense strategy especially for weaker game starts.  It would also be an excellent use for our usually very healthy non-combatants besides just hauling the wounded and dead during and after the battles.

-Cheers.

Further...  while I am mostly advocating the simplest application of this method, ie, change behavior of stockpile filling first because you get the greatest bang for the buck on hauling efficiency.  I had the following additional thought:

For an investment of 2 bytes per stockpile you could have a "fill from" compass direction and a "take from" compass direction.  This would give players a pseudo LIFO/FIFO type control over resource use from stockpiles.  I think some would drool for this ability, I know I would because it would reduce micromanagement of expiring food resources (set stockpile to FIFO and forget about it, FIFO = for example "fill from N, take from N") .  It would not work perfectly because vacancies would disrupt stacks that were previously sorted by age along a specific vector but might work a little better than the current random algorithm and give the illusion of better stockpile control anyway.  It could be made to work even better if the re-stacking algorithm was re-designed to sort stuff along a vector by item expiration/age, but now I'm going down a rabbit hole and I don't think you want to go there.

Cheers.

PS(FIFO = First in - first out, LIFO = Last in - first out, these are standard inventory control and accounting terms)

Stockpile optimization is a hot topic.  I appreciate that many suggestions offered by players do not achieve a positive cost/ benefit analysis for developer time and/ or processor cycles/ resources to QoL or gameplay benefits.  I believe the following suggestion to have only moderate benefits to stockpile management and it does not provide the benefits offered in more complex optimization suggestions.  However, I believe the method should be very simple to implement so might be worth a look: 

Because of the nature of stuff storage in RW, stockpiles can become fairly large chunks of real estate across the map.  Players become very aware of and sensitive to hauling distance and hauling optimization in their colony layouts and spend real effort to optimize their stockpile and haul route layouts.  Even small inefficiencies loom large in the mind of the players as you well understand.

Setting the recently implemented stockpile stuff re-stacking code aside for the moment, it appears that pawns when selecting where to place an item in a stockpile, if after failing to find a suitable existing stack to add to, they then select a random spot in the stockpile to drop their cargo.  This often results in players watching their pawns cross numerous suitable empty spots to place their item in a distant corner.  This would be a minor annoyance and not worth another thought except for the frequency with which this inefficient behavior is observed in every game.  Players currently shrug it off as a "cost of doing business" and perhaps that is ok, no development resources required to fix it, working as designed.  An exceedingly simple improvement comes to mind however:

Most stockpiles have an optimal direction on the compass from which they could be filled/emptied which would greatly reduce this inefficiency.  If players could assign a preferred fill direction for every stockpile ( a 1 byte parameter attached to each stockpile object ) as follows  (0 = random (default), 1 - North, 2 - East, 3 - South, 4 - West) then pawns could load into and retrieve items from the stockpile by sorting and then selecting the largest or smallest X or Y value of empty (or full, for picking stuff up) storage positions inside the stockpile.   I believe a button adjacent to the current stockpile settings "Priority" button with the option to select your preferred fill/empty gradient direction from a pull down list would suffice as a simple GUI for this approach. 

The code is a little harder for picking stuff out of a stockpile following a gradient since you undoubtedly just search for the closest stack right now and you may not want to make this task any more complicated.  If you incorporate this gradient following behavior into the restacking algorithm you need not check the gradient at all when picking stuff up, most of the time the stockpile would still work more efficiently.  If you did nothing at all to the algorithms for restacking or picking stuff up, I still think this gradient following algorithm for dropping things into a stockpile would result in significantly improved hauling and storage behavior and your players would greatly appreciate the benefits.

In summary, filling or emptying a stockpile using this relatively simple gradient following mechanism is more efficient for pawns than random alone, and players will perceive that much less time is wasted in unnecessarily long hauling tasks.  I think this would become a very much appreciated augmentation of pawn behavior.  Although I don't know the code base to be modified I believe it to be a relatively simple solution, at least for the case of dropping things into a stockpile.  The processor cost of one or two additional sorting steps is a cumulative load on the game resources certainly, but I think if you gave it a try you would find player perceptions and gameplay improvement significant enough to justify it.  Expansion to include NE, NW, SE, and SW compass points would be even better and only slightly more difficult to implement.

Cheers.

Caravans are very much a mid-game thing. Early game if you know what you're doing. Buying some medicine from traders and keeping them for emergencies I find is a way to ensure safe caravan runs.

@1.0 Cass rough,  re: disease, infection, and misc while travelling in caravan

I have experienced some difficult loss of pawns to both disease and infection while on a caravan, my fault totally, but often this is a major buzz kill.  I'll spare the stories because they are common enough.  I am an experienced RW player and know the risks.  Two thoughts though:

1)  So many early offered quests provides the (unintended?) incentive: "The game gives me so many early quests, perhaps I am being a whimp in not taking more chances on the world map?"  ...and then crash, and I have killed another colony because I lose half or more of the pawns on an adventure for which I was ill prepared.  Consider reducing # of offered quests if a player has X many outstanding unexpired quests on the map.  Suggest that quests currently without expiration be given an expiration albeit a very long one (years).  Request option to "forget/decline/ignore" quests and remove them from the map after perhaps half or 3/4 of their lifetime is past (to prevent player quest shopping). 

2)  I dislike the "you don't have enough food" dialogue box for caravans but it is important for new players.  Here is a way to make it better.  Add 3 additional checks/ messages to the existing box (no new warning boxes please!).  2a)  Check medical skill level of pawns... msg "Warning:  the risk of disease and infection is very high for caravans, consider bringing a skilled medic with (7?) skill level before leaving."  2b)  Check # of meds... msg  "Warning:  the risk of disease and infection is very high for caravans, consider bringing at least (2x?) meds per pawn/ animal before leaving."  2c)  Check # of beds/bedrolls.  "Warning:  colonists will suffer a mood penalty while sleeping on the ground, consider bringing a bed or bedroll for each traveller to improve their mood." (EDIT:  There is also a substantial enough risk of increased infection for sleeping on ground, that could be mentioned too.)

@1.0 standard scenario, Cassandra "rough"  re: taming regression experience

Had a polar bear and wolf go wild on me in tundra in middle of first winter, ok, those little emergencies are exactly what keeps this game interesting.  I applaud that the animal tame regress mechanic now provides for overall better game balance. I thought perhaps rescuing and then feeding them after I downed them would give me a chance to retame.  No luck.  Two less mouths to feed and a little more meat on the table then I guess. 

The sad part was that before going feral they were very well fed in an otherwise completely barren environment.  After going wild they were starving and stalked my pawns rather than take a little hand out food.  I never had a chance to even try to tame them again, they were too ravenous and just attacked the nearest pawns.  I think a higher chance to revert back to tamed should be considered after going wild.  If they keep their per pawn social preference stats after reverting to wild then a previous well loved master approaching with food should quickly bring them back into the fold imo.  Next time I might also try leaving some meat on the doorstep until they are less ravenous and less likely to attack first... learning by experience, the gold standard for RW.  I still hope the animals retrain somewhat easier then a fully wild animal, perhaps that is already incorporated and working as designed.  I thought the story worth relating.

Love the game, particularly the difficulty, don't love everything about 1.0 but on whole it is going in right direction, same comment on recent adjustments.  Thank you!