Your Cheapest Ideas

[hector212121]

How about limb quality?

A Awful bionic might be 75% effectiveness, while a Legendary pegleg('crafting' stat would be Medicine for that, or perhaps you'd have Installation quality and so you'd ALWAYS end up with Medicine determining quality) would be the same 100% that a normal leg would be.

You already have a quality system, though admittedly I don't know how long this might take to code.

[Jorlem]

I'd like a Random button for choosing a landing site when starting a new colony.

[Xanting]

Would it be simple to add in a way to set how large around a hone area is zoned when you place a structure or object?

[b0rsuk]

Allergy. Whenever an allergy strikes, the pawn gets a mild non-lethal sickness. However, it could lower the pawn's immune responses, and complicate things when there are other injuries.
There could be a few types:
- dust/dirt allergy. The pawn is extra sensitive to dirty areas, dirt in indoor areas, particularly his sleeping room. Outside it's not a problem, because of good ventilation.
- pollen/seed allergy: this one is seasonal, and occurs in the growing period, making perma-warm biomes slightly less of a no-brainer.
- food allergy. Cooked meals made from certain (especially plant?) ingredients will make the pawn sick. Nutrient paste is not affected.
- venom allergy. This is really just vulnerability to poison. As far as I know only cobras are venomous right now (?). But some warmer biomes could have creepy, sneaky spiders.
- allergy to cats. Something to keep in mind if pets are implemented. Also caused by items crafted from cat leather.

[Bacon Invader]

- Chocolate: Boosts happyness for a while, can only be obtained through traders. Low nutritions.

- Battery Efficency: A simple research which slightly increases the power batteries can hold.

- Gems: Actually rather useless items, but very much worth when trading with htem. Higher chance to encounter them in hot areas.

- Gem Heating: A research which allows you to refine gems, increasing their worth even more.

- Drill: A big machine which requires much power and space. Once set up, it automatically mines stones, ores or gems out of the ground and puts them next to itself. Its most efficent on rocky grounds.

- Mining Laser: This device can be operated by a person with a mining skill of 10 or higher. It slows the wearer down drastically, but it cuts ridiculously fast through rocks or enemy armour.

- Bomb Suit: A heavy and big suit which provides the wearer resistance against explosives.

- Baloons & Cake: These items can be used on birthdays to boost the morale of the team (and especially the person which has birthday) for several days in a row.

- Marijuana: This plant requires much time to grow, but once its done it can be turned into painkillers (gives the user some temporary extra health) or weed (renders the user unable to do anything for 6 hours, but boosts happyness drastically).

- Blackout: A sudden event which disables all of your power buildings. To restore them back to normal, they need to be repaired which takes quite some time.

- Crashlanding: A spontanous event which makes a small spaceship crash in front of your base, leaving a wreck to clean up and 2-3 angry and decently equipped pirates.

[Adamiks]

- Chocolate: Boosts happyness for a while, can only be obtained through traders. Low nutritions.

Do you even played in A9 or A10?

[Frankenbeasley]

- Chocolate: Boosts happyness for a while, can only be obtained through traders. Low nutritions.

Definitely a cheap idea! Also, Tynan, how about a chess set? 

[Adamiks]

- Chocolate: Boosts happyness for a while, can only be obtained through traders. Low nutritions.

Definitely a cheap idea! Also, Tynan, how about a chess set? 

Oh, i already have chess set (ekhem made by me of course)! i can upload it only for 1 dollar!

[Sjaa]

I like to craft outside, but all my powered craft tables get soaked (especially later in the game when the storyteller seems to be sending storms every other day).
How about a tarp that can be pitched over crafting benches and other things that keep the rain off of what's below them?  (This could also increase temperature of items below it if wanted, similar to greenhouse effect.)

[MrWiggles]

Pirates demanding tribute. Probably not a cheap idea, as you need to figure out what partially paid tributes are, and what category of tributes are and what a good time frames are, from generous to bleeding you dry.

[akiceabear]

Manual priorities start all as level 3, rather than 4. This makes it easier to deprioritize one or two tasks, rather than increase all others, when starting a new game.

[Necronomocoins]

Like a raid, but a group of broken rampaging animals or maybe some new 'predatory' (carnivorous) animals spawn, attacking then devouring the nearest source of meat (an animal or a human) whenever one gets hungry enough (like Alphabeavers, but for meat, not trees).

[converging]

Celebrations: add ability to right-click a dining table with options "Celebrate" or "Commemorate" when there is a birthday or some other anniversary (colony anniversary or colonists' death anniversary), if the player fails to do that on that day people get a negative "missed birthday/anniversary" debuff for a few days

[converging]

Maintenance: everything should slowly/slightly randomly deteriorate over time (i.e. machines, tables, doors, etc.) and require repairs, this will add aggro in the late game so that you always need one or more "handyman" running aroung fixing things

[Karl6658]

How about an option to station a colonist somewhere as a sentry? A patrol path or whatever. In the colonists schedule he would patrol during the 'work' hours. It would need another column in the job list (fire fighting, growing, hauling, patrolling). It would save a little bit of micromanaging - if a raid appears at least one capable colonist wont be caught napping. The trade off is that less work in the colony would be done.

If it needed to be developed a little you could have a soldier role, where military colonists sleep in barracks, train, watch prisoners etc. They presumably wouldn't mind sharing a room and they could grab equipment off equipment racks in an armoury.