Some ideas for traits, mood, food, zones, etc.

[OpposingForces]

here's some general ideas for the future. some Tynan might already have planned, idk.

Food variety, Effects mood and health: Currently there's no real reason to grow more than one kind of crop other then visual. My idea is two fold. the first is that nobody enjoys eating the same thing over and over again. so idea would be that colonists would get grouchy having to eat the same thing over and over again. the second part is health. people need to eat a balanced diet to maintain nutrition and health. so if all your people are eating just meat, or just potatoes then their health may degrade a bit.
Related events and traits: mono cropping irl is a bad idea since blights effect certain foods. so my idea would be a change to the current mysterious blight system. instead of it effecting all the crops it would target a certain type. so it could go " a mysterious blight destroyed your potatoes." etc. this would encourage greater variety of food types to be grown to avoid whole harvests wiped out.
as far as traits go i can think of two to tie in: carnivore and vegetarian.
carnivores would prefer eating meat, possibly even raw, and would receive a mood boost. they'd be willing to eat fruits and veggies but might take a slight hit in mood. and the flip side of that for vegetarians. colonist would also purposefully seek out their preferred meals / food when hungry.

rehabilitation: this idea may be to complicated or go counter to the vision of the game but i thought i'd throw it out there. the idea would be to have sessions of some sort between doctors / wardens and colonists that have bad traits, I.E. chemically interested, depressive, etc. over a long period of time the patients could reduce or lose those traits.
traits could remain as recovering chem addict or recovering depressive. events could cause them to regress perhaps.

keep clear zone  and forbidden zone: the keep clear zone would allow you to designate an area to keep clear of trees, bush's etc. colonists with the plant cutting job would cut down what ever is set in the area's bill. so if you only wanted grass to grow in your compound you'd set trees and bushes to be cut. it would exclude automatically growing zones. would be useful for creating fire breaks and keeping firing lanes clear.
forbidden zone, this would be useful for keeping colonist away from certain areas such as keeping non combatants away from a warzone. these two ideas would help to reduce some of the micro management that currently is required.

assignable groups: what i mean by this is the ability select a group of colonists, hit ctrl + somekey and assign them to that key. so whenever i need them i press that key and bam all of them(still alive , functioning) are selected so i can quickly respond to threats.

Research: a new research tree for wood / plant cutting. these task are slow and never improve. how about researchable wood axes, chainsaws for wood and pruning shears for bushes and grass? would fit in with pneumatic picks. sledge hammer for construction/deconstruction, "diamond" hoe for farming(never waste diamonds on hoes... lol)

new ore and more power wire types: new ore would be copper, could be used for weapons, wiring and for making mortar shells.
new wire types in addition to steel would be copper and gold. steel would be the worst wire while gold would be the best with copper as the middle ground. perhaps the new wire types would have less chance of faults or shorts. realistically copper and gold handle power much better as steel has too much resistance. lead can also conduct electricity better than steel. perhaps wire could have efficiency like batteries, so steel would only be 50% efficient, copper 75% and gold 100%. so for better power flow you'd want better wire. would make gold actually useful besides a secondary currency and make it hard to decide between gold statues and better wiring.

Trapping / traps: build-able traps such as bear traps and snares. for hunting purposes they'd have to be baited, they'd have a storage slot much like weapon racks but for bait. for defensive purposes they's just need to be built. against enemies they'd only do minor damage to the legs, slowing them down. a colonist with a clumsy trait could have a chance to set off traps and hurt themselves. clumsy trait would slow all work by a small amount.

Mulch pile zone: the ability to zone an area as a mulch / compost site. all rotten food and animal corpses get hauled there and slowly over time turn the soil underneath to rich soil. only available on surfaces that can already host plants. rich soil could become extremely fertile but take a very long time to improve. any rotten items place in this zone would be auto marked as forbidden. they would remain till their durability is gone then they'd disappear leaving a small patch of rich soil. it could serve as a good solution to disposing of rotting food.

sand / gravel and sand bag / concrete changes: currently sand bags / concrete are made from steel... ok. my thought is any rock you mine that doesn't produce ore  or a stone chunk should produce gravel or sand. these together would make concrete(not realistic but better than steel) and gravel / sand and cloth could make sand bags.

new Maintenance job: walls, conduits and production tables and power generators could slowly degrade over time and need maintenance.

Oil and gasoline generators: would need pipes i guess but basically you could pump oil to a generator for producing alot of power. colonist wouldn't like them much though do to noise and pollution but could be handy for a temporary source of power.

well that's it for now. if i think of more i'll add them or if anything is unclear i'll try to reword it.