The biggest outstanding gameplay issue is.....

[entelin]

Gun Safety

IMO the largest outstanding issue with current gameplay is lack of any firing logic, for three principal reasons.

1. Hunters will just shoot bloody everywhere, if an animal is reachable outside the front door? Yup he will happily gun down everyone that exits the building. Caravan in the way? Congrats you have a new enemy faction. Send out a few hunters at once and they will come back with more bullets in each other than in animals.

2. Caravan's just put themselves anywhere, for example in front of turrets, which will happily gun them down if they are in the way.

3. During battles target choices do not take into account friendlies in the way, for example your melee guys, even if there are plenty of other open targets.

Of course there are occasionally time's when you would want them to not take this into account, for example if a friendly is getting chased by a mob of wargs and is doomed anyway, for that edge case a safety off button could be employed.

I write this just after my hunter decided it was a great idea to put a bullet through my lvl 20 artist's head. But hey he got the rabbit right after....

[falconbunker]

Agreed

[Mr.Cross]

Heh, if you think that's bad I had a sniper a couple of alpha's back that decided he was going to one shot, head shot a colonist through a wall. I guess the colonist was rather blunt when it came to some issues...

[b0rsuk]

Hunters can even walk into your deadfall traps in the open!!

[cultist]

The problem is there's no way for the hunter's AI to determine a "safe" location to fire from. The AI can't know if a pawn's next task takes it through the hunter's line of fire (because the task is not assigned yet). Even worse, the player might force a pawn to do something that has the same result (walking in front of the hunter). Hunting pawns would have to constanly stop and check for potential dangers before shooting. They'd never get a shot off.

And this is all assuming the hunter stays in one position, but they move around all the time because the animals move. How do you determine what parts of a large area (everything between the hunter and the animal) that's constantly changing (the hunter moves around) is safe?

The best thing you can do is only assign one hunter at a time, and not hunt animals right next to your base. In most cases a single hunter can keep you stocked with meat.

[Kegereneku]

Several reasons I don't see any issue here :

1) I keep sending hunter together, they never hit each other.
2) I fought Thrumbo with 4pawn in melee, 4 others gunning, barely ONE hit wrong and they used shotgun & plasma riffle.
3) Turrets are better as double-edged. Before, it was too easy to manually target things and deactivate them at moment notice.
4) Traps are meant to be double-edged too, at worst we need a "Danger-zone" that work differently from inverted-allowed-zone so it don't get overridden during task or draft

[Limdood]

Several reasons I don't see any issue here :

1) I keep sending hunter together, they never hit each other.
2) I fought Thrumbo with 4pawn in melee, 4 others gunning, barely ONE hit wrong and they used shotgun & plasma riffle.
3) Turrets are better as double-edged. Before, it was too easy to manually target things and deactivate them at moment notice.
4) Traps are meant to be double-edged too, at worst we need a "Danger-zone" that work differently from inverted-allowed-zone so it don't get overridden during task or draft

Kegereneku, despite not having this problem, it is WELL known and experienced within the community.  Quite simply, the problem exists.  Problems #1 and 2 exist despite you not experiencing them, however, in general, it is a problem that has to be managed, as "cultist" said, the coding/work to "remove" the problem would be intensive, and may cause as many problems as are removed.

For #3, people aren't complaining about turrets here, they're complaining about caravans stopping in front of your turrets with NO current tools to move the traders or avoid them turning hostile if your turrets graze them.

#4 i'm not sure this exists....in all but the most extreme cases, pawns avoid traps they're aware of if there is another route available.  I can't say for sure the issue doesn't exist, because i don't use deadfall traps in the open.  If it does happen, its a disconnect in behavior and should be fixed.  Pawns currently avoid traps they know of if there is another route available...hunters wandering onto traps for a different shot angle is directly opposed to that established behavior.

[Jorlem]

The problem is there's no way for the hunter's AI to determine a "safe" location to fire from. The AI can't know if a pawn's next task takes it through the hunter's line of fire (because the task is not assigned yet). Even worse, the player might force a pawn to do something that has the same result (walking in front of the hunter). Hunting pawns would have to constanly stop and check for potential dangers before shooting. They'd never get a shot off.

What if the new "flee from danger" could be made to recognize ranged threats in addition to melee?  Then, all that would need to be done is have the moving pawn flee when it gets close to a hunter's firing line, and try to path so it doesn't cross the line, or come too nearby.

[Too-DAMN-Much]

Hunters can even walk into your deadfall traps in the open!!

well IRL don't a lot of hunters put a circle of pebbles around a trap so other humans can spot it? traps are typically hidden by nature.