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Remember to not give your pawns too much too do. Small projects are key to keep everything running smooth and the occasional forced haul or clean shouldn't be a problem.

There's this movie called The Edge (with Anthony Hopkins) about these three guys who crashland in an airplane in the Alaskan wilderness. In many ways the theme matches RW perfectly. But watch this movie and imagine this stuff happening in RimWorld and realize that many/most players would have quit several times due to "shit tier rng".

Definately, but the difference between a movie and Rimworld is the time investment and the ability to start over hoping for a different outcome.
That movie is always the same and the end result is written up in advance. When you watch it for the first time everything is new and exciting, but the script is set.
Rimworld on the other hand has random events, which over time will write your own unique story and you have a goal to achieve; get into space.
How you get to that goal doesn't matter that much, you just need to get there and the end result is either a cool story with a few survivors, or everyone dies in a horrible sequence of events.
Movies usually don't have that horrible sequence. "And then everyone dies, the end, thanks for watching, clean your litter on the way out please"

As it stands now, the chance that horrible sequence can occur is quite high (to me playing rough/permadeath that is) and usually it is a downward spiral quickly raging out of control. Therefore, when I get a day 1 hand gnawed off I'm like, yup, this is that first step into a downward spiral. Day 1, 2 wounded, 1 who is 50% effective till I get bionics.

I might be wrong on this one, but rough difficulty has no mood boost or penalty, right? Hence I choose that difficulty. One feels like cheating, the other just lame. But it seems rough also has an increase in severity on the random events, so for me choosing a difficulty I enjoy is tough. Do I go for the mood boost and easier encounters or a balanced mood and harder encounters? Quite a big gap there.
Perhaps a few extra difficulties to give us players more options to find the most optimal fun challenge without feeling too easy or difficult, all while keeping how you intend Rimworld to be intact could fix some frustration for us players?

I've got no point here except to note just how clear the conflict is between the story-frame and the game-frame here. Each point of view is totally legit within that frame, yet completely ridiculous in the other.

Perhaps my suggestion of adding more difficulties, or better said, more options for us players on how our story unfolds, isn't that far off a solution?
Perhaps remove mood bonusses from difficulties and/or adjust parameters we can choose which combined calculate a difficulty?

In the end you have a vision of this game and we simply have to deal with it, but having ways to influence to our needs and wishes how our story unfolds, well, there lie some answers maybe? We can deactivate events we don't like. Don't know if you keep that option for the official 1.0 release, but there seem to lie a whole lot of options on giving us a bit more control of our story.

On RNG, I can deal with it, to an extend. I guess it all boils down to balancing out the good vs the bad AND the amount of it. The new armor calculations for example are, for me, yet another source of RNG in a game which already had enough tbh.

Edit: gadjung's idea of sliders sounds appealing. Don't know how it fits your vision of Rimworld, but in the end it is a single player and moddable game.
edit 2: spacing and grammar

After reading a few other posts I do like to add that losing pawns to random stuff beyond your control hits quite hard. The pawns which are worth recruiting are quite rare.
I just accepted a refugee chased by raiders. Turns out he is greedy, abrasive and cannot fight. First thing he does as he walks past my pawns I'm setting up to encounter the raiders is insult someone.

For balance sake, either give us more information about the refugee, traits at the very least, because this will be the last time I accept this request.
The raiders managed to get 3 of my 5 guys quite heavily wounded and now I'm stuck with a walking debuff as well. I guess I'll just roll a new tribe.

Rng is fine, but sometimes this game screws you over in ways which are simply annoying and are preventable for example by balancing some OP (positive as well as negative) traits.
This game requires a lot of time investment and too much rng is simply bad.

edit: judging by your last post it is clear you are putting a lot of thought into this issue. Since I can only comment from personal experience and how I aproach this game, all I can say is I wish you all the wisdom in the world to tackle this (imo) balance issue. Seems like hell of a job tbh, and in the end you can't please everyone.

As the title suggests, I'd love to have the option of neutering my domestic animals so I can have a more humane way of dealing with exponential growing numbers of cats

edit: Just a thought that came up to me: If this is taken into consideration, might I suggest a combination of Animal Handling and Medicine to be able to perform the surgery.

I'll give my 2 cents, for what it's worth, on the questions you asked.
I always play rough/permadeath because that just feels to me how this game is intended to be played. For me at least.

1) I absolutely love the thrill of every decision having a possible negative outcome if you don't plan right. Your example of the guy rushing in a melee fighter and friendly fire killing him is simply a bad decision (perhaps a calculated risk?) on the players part.
Should he have flanked with his melee fighter and at the moment he engaged his target focus fire his ranged fighters on another target? ofcourse, if that tactic was possible at that moment.
Rushing in melee fighters, fully armored or not, should always be a risk. But these are risks you can play around and plan for, somewhat. Just don't expect a pawn to be invulnerable just because he has the best armor in the game.

And then there is this example of what happened to me yesterday. My previous colony lost to a bad run of events in succession. It was day 20ish when I lost my tribe because I was not prepared to fighting 2 reasonably well armed raids in succession using just recurve bows, all while I had to fight of a plague, a few infections, food shortage and an incoming wall of fire due to a flashstorm. Long story short, I didn't make it.
So I start a new tribe, roll for a decent starting crew and a day 1 social fight has 1 pawn bite off the hand of another.

The first tribe I lost was bad luck in combination with bad preparation. The second I simply quit day 1 because losing a hand is just (excuse my language) shit tier rng. The clearly-traceable mistake in the first colony was preventable on my part. Could I go on with the second tribe? I guess so, but is it worth it having 2 wounded guys on day 1 and even when they recover have 1 work on 50% efficiency? I'll just start a new colony.

2) For me personally Rimworld is about the story. Ofcourse I play out combat as an RTS and I hate it when I lose pawns to either overwhelming numbers, bad preparations or bad luck, but that simply drives me to improve my tactics and defenses the next raid or tribe I play.
About ignoring the players who cannot deal with bad luck, I guess being able to reload should be enough for them tbh. If you have a vision for a game I say you should stick to it and simply decide what is fair/unfair and, most of all, FUN to play. I wish you all the insight and wisom in the world to find a good balance between those factors

3) No. I refer to answer 2; it's your job to find a good balance between fair, unfair and fun. Us players can give some feedback, but most of it would be in our favour as in getting rid of everything perceived as unfair. Is it fair my pawn lost his hand on day 1. No. Neither is it fun, for me that is. I'm certain there are players who accept the challenge and play on, see how far they can get with a start like that. I'm not 1 of them. So I decide I just start a new tribe and hope the first phase of preperations goes well enough to see a pawn losing his hand later on as a setback I can live and deal with. For me those kind of decisions are part of this game and I wouldn't want it any other way.

4) I guess that simply varies for each player. I also think people tend to remember the bad situations and forget that psychic soothe that saved 2 of their pawn from going berserk. It all boils down to how well everything is balanced out.

Which brings me to the conclusion it all boils down to just that; Balance. I think people would be more willing to accept the bad situations more if the overall balance of the game is improved. Skill is a big factor in this game, but imo it shouldn't be so that skill could save you from everyhting.
edit: Just don't come complaining about fair when you insist playing Permadeath Randy Extreme 

Maybe put a disclaimer on the sales page: If you cannot deal with losses in Xcom, prepare to contact your local psychologist after playing Rimworld

When I'm rolling members for a tribe I tend to get a lot of the 'indoorsman' trait. Don't know if it's just me experiencing bad rng on that part. Can anyone confirm this?

After killing the raiders chasing the refugee I offered shelter, I had 2 out of my 5 guys healing up from gunshots. That's when a flashstorm started to  burn up the surroundings of my base. Having to devide my healthy comrades between tending to the wounded, the 2 prisoners and hauling enough crops to be able to keep feeding everyone, another group of raiders decided to show up with grenades and an incediary weapon. Even though having only recurve bows I accepted the challenge, got the 2 wounded out of bed and engaged the raiders, all while a wall of flames was creeping up to my base.
I managed to win the fight having the invaders running for the hills, but not without getting everyone except my medic heavily wounded.
Quickly releasing the prisoners I had, to lower the burden on my 1 healthy guy, 2 of the wounded got an infection.

Still this wall of flame was creeping up on my base.

The final nail in the coffin was the medic and one of the wounded got the plague, sending the medic into a mental break.

Everything burned down, roasting people in their beds while my medic was smashing up furniture in a burning messhall

Then the rains came, washing away all that was left of my dreams of reaching outer space.


A new tribe; first day a social fight broke out and one guy decided to gnaw off the hand of another. I love this game.

I find the chemical and pyro traits completely frustrating.  There is no story I enjoy here.

I do agree on this. If both these traits were managable in some way, like pyro only burning stuff on a mental break or when he has not seen a fire in a long time, which could be solved by always having a campfire going or something like this, I would actually consider recruiting them.
For the chemical traits, perhaps putting them on a schedule AND keeping their mood up could mitigate the binging somehow. Or have the binging as a mental break only, with a higher chance than normal to break.

As it is now I simply patch them up and kick them out, unless I need an emergency organ or something.

I do love the story aspect of this game, but like you said, some things just don't add to it especially when you already know the outcome.

Visitors and traders choose less annoying spots to hang out.

How about you make us choose where they can hang out using something alike the marriage spot? Less hassle for you to program (I think) and gives us more direct control.

One more thing to do here is that it costs the faction caravan spot recipe. They will not be able to easily change the upper operating point and prevent abuse.

And you need a dismiss feature to send the faction caravan out immediately.

Preventing abuse seems fair, but I'm not really concerned about that. I'd just love to designate a small part of my base for visitors to hang out but nothing as complicated as the hospitality mod. Just me wanting to control where visitors can go, just like I treat visitors in my own home.

A dismiss feature sounds handy though.

Visitors and traders choose less annoying spots to hang out.

How about you make us choose where they can hang out using something alike the marriage spot? Less hassle for you to program (I think) and gives us more direct control.