Even a Small Skirmish is Only Half The Battle

[cultist]

Nice wiki article, I did not spot it earlier.
I had a troubling question reading it:
How is cover programmed?

sniper--stone----------------------------------poor colonist

Stone gives cover to the sniper so his shots are not affected, but poor colonist's one are.

sniper---------------------------------stone--smart colonist

This time it's reversed: the sniper is less likely to shot the colonist.

If all he above is true, then

sniper----------------------------stone-turret

is ok for my automatic turret?

There's no reason to put your turrets behind cover, they cannot benefit from it. Probably best to just stick them out in the open, away from anything that can get damaged by the explosion.

[sadpickle]

There's no reason to put your turrets behind cover, they cannot benefit from it. Probably best to just stick them out in the open, away from anything that can get damaged by the explosion.

The wiki says otherwise, in multiple places. How positive are you? I always wrap my turrets in sandbags.

[Fungus]

I recently discovered your colonists can watch tv from their hospital beds. I've not had issues with mood for many in game years, but you might find that helpful. Keeping the hospital rooms clean is very important (it seems to me that dirt increases likelihood of diseases in general), as are proper floors. Sterile is great, but make sure something is there as most floor types increase beauty. Colonists suffer no mood loss from double beds if they're injured, and higher quality treatments increase healing speed. Fine meals help, lavish are prefferable. Micromanage relationships, checking for wooing attempts: if two colonists hit it off make sure they work together. The mood impacts are incredible if they get together. Use other means of finance than relying on mood killers, unless your colonists can happily survive starvation and loss. Leather, massive devilstrand plantations and healroot work with most traders, clothing can be sold to exotic merchants. Dusters are brilliant for profit. Don't build your hospital or bedrooms under a mountain. Keep a freezer stocked with food and medicine right by your hospital. Use individual rooms unless you can stay on top of cleaning/ mood. Keep rooms well lit. Use double beds and the right click menu option "rest until healed" to promote relationships. The doctors will become everyone's best friend, beware infidelity. Have at least two, preferably four, doctors, two for daytime and two for night. Prompt feeding and treatment helps all round. Use medical beds and health analysers asap. Get huskys, breed them, assign one male puppy to each colonist, wait for bonding. Protect said puppies and train them in hauling. (Huskies have the best stats of all the dogs in my opinion, and domestic animals do not produce filth) +5 mood if they stay safe, plus extra labour. Unassign once bonded and pen them to some high traffic stockpiles; beware underground areas and home as they can wander into to bug hives or past the base perimeter. Alternatively, assign them to a non combatant, circle said colonist behind any attacking forces and release animals once the attackers start fleeing. If you use this method be mindful of where the dogs are and which route they'll take. They don't follow the colonist, they move to the colonist's destination.

Well, those are little tricks and such I use. There's probably things I've forgotten but hopefully you'll find them useful. I've had colonist mood floating up to 95% at times, notably with parties and marriages. Last colonist to go berserk was a new recruit who had recently lost three family members and seen 5 allies die. He was hungry and on his way to eat a lavish meal which would have picked him up enough to  carry on.

Sorry about the wall of text, I'm using a mobile and it's too frustrating to properly format. :$

[Rahjital]

There's no reason to put your turrets behind cover, they cannot benefit from it. Probably best to just stick them out in the open, away from anything that can get damaged by the explosion.

The wiki says otherwise, in multiple places. How positive are you? I always wrap my turrets in sandbags.

Just checked the code and did an additional practical test. Yes, the game now actually checks cover for turrets (it used not to), but due to some peculiarity in code, turrets are actually more vulnerable behind sandbags! According to the accuracy report, a level 20 shooter with a normal pistol has 25% chance to hit an uncovered turret at 20 tiles, and 11% chance to hit a covered turret at the same distance. But from the development mode tests I did, it turns out covered turrets are almost always destroyed earlier. No idea why that is, that will need some further research.

[w00d]

/shrug in the end, you will spend more time burning clothes , bodies and stuff the hundreds of fools that got bodied than actual building or fighting. In the future, house work will take more time than anything else ..