Colony Interactions

[WhiteRock]

I always thought that the interactions between other colonies are quite limited, and should be expanded upon. I know that most of my points will be a lot of work to implement, but I think it would make sense to expand on this feature before adding any new ones. 
I'm going  to be splitting the three different factions (Out-lander, tribe, and raider) to what I feel would be the best mechanics for them. Although, some mechanics could be universal for all three factions.

Out-lander Towns
-I don't like the whole "Shut up and take my money!" approach to getting goodwill. What if the towns instead called you and asked for supplies they are in desperate need of? That way you won't just be giving silver. Also, it will be at random intervals, so it will be a little more difficult to acquire goodwill. If goodwill is harder to get, you could get better benefits from it.
-Trading with out-lander towns. you can trade with ships in space but not towns on the same planet?
-Visiting Out-lander towns. This will probably be extremely hard to program, but it kind of feels like your isolated when towns can visit you but you can't visit them. Could also make it so you can become a raider colony.

Tribes
-Do tribes have comm consoles? They are pretty primitive, I don't think they will be able to power the thing, if they had one. Instead it could be more logical that they instead send messengers over to speak with your representative instead of using technology.
-Do tribes need silver either? Wouldn't they want something that will actually help them? Instead of resources, getting goodwill from tribes could be giving services. The tribe needs more huts? send over your builders with some wood to help them out. The tribe was struck with the flu? Don't worry, we have doctors and medicine! This means visiting them as well.
-With all the work that it would be to acquire goodwill, the amount of warriors sent to help defend against attacks on your colony should be a considerable force. Tribes aren't to trusting, so if they consider you a ally, they should treat you as if you were part of the tribe.

Raiders
-Fighting back. When the raiders come and shoot up your colonists, you should be able to strike back. Go to their camp and shoot back! Did the raiders kidnap your star chef? Go on a search and rescue! No man left behind!
-Selling prisoners you captured in attacks back to the raiders. Hostage negotiations and all that jazz.
-Contact raiders for organized assaults on out-lander towns. You can finally be a raider colony! 

Again, I know this will be A LOT of work, but it will really add another dimension to the game.

[WhiteRock]

how would you choose to be a raider colony? If this was implemented, how would you show you were a raider colony instead of a farming community? Would you click a button in your overview? A more specific answer is appreciated.

The choices you make would determine your goodwill with the factions. If you go and shoot up a out-lander town, I don't think they will be happy about it.

To answer your question, there will be no actual change in title from farming to raider. It's just that you could constantly shoot up and steal from other colonies. I think you would consider yourself a raider at that point.

[Dive]

I like all the mentioned ideas. The current interaction system seems like a placeholder and I hope it will change. Such entity as "faction" right now consists of only a few bits of info - their type, name, location and their loyality to the player and other factions. I hope at some point the entity will also include the amount of people and resources a faction has (thus you won't have an infinite amount of visitors/attackers), and based on this information there could be generated a base of the faction.
There are consequences to the implementation of such mechanics though. First of all, you would be unlikely to get 100+ attackers siege/assault, unless the attacking faction is really strong. And if you happen to have such attack, if you win then the attacking faction will most likely be almost defeated, just gather you people and go assault the emptyed attackers base (a base that used to supply 100+ colonists, could you imagine the scale of the structure?). Thus balance would substantially change.
Second. The game would cease to be 100% survival based game and would turn into some sort of a faction-based strategy. I like it nonetheless, but there might be people thinking  otherwise. Particularly, if Tynan thinks the game must be 100% survival, we will never see aforecited features
Right now the playthrough is essentially like this: survive hunger, survive extreme temperatures, establish a well-defended and self-sustaining settlement, keep surviving endless attacks until you die/escape everyone in a spaceship.
Imagine if you could expand it to such things as defeat/take control of/make allies with a different colony, found a new settlement nearby, capture 10 other towns/outposts and ultimately establish a state, why not *dreams*

[shadowangel101]

Another possibility to consider could be requesting services from another colony, like if you're desperately in need of a doctor you could hire one for a short period of time.

[Avis]

I like all the mentioned ideas. The current interaction system seems like a placeholder and I hope it will change. Such entity as "faction" right now consists of only a few bits of info - their type, name, location and their loyality to the player and other factions. I hope at some point the entity will also include the amount of people and resources a faction has (thus you won't have an infinite amount of visitors/attackers), and based on this information there could be generated a base of the faction.
There are consequences to the implementation of such mechanics though. First of all, you would be unlikely to get 100+ attackers siege/assault, unless the attacking faction is really strong. And if you happen to have such attack, if you win then the attacking faction will most likely be almost defeated, just gather you people and go assault the emptyed attackers base (a base that used to supply 100+ colonists, could you imagine the scale of the structure?). Thus balance would substantially change.
Second. The game would cease to be 100% survival based game and would turn into some sort of a faction-based strategy. I like it nonetheless, but there might be people thinking  otherwise. Particularly, if Tynan thinks the game must be 100% survival, we will never see aforecited features
Right now the playthrough is essentially like this: survive hunger, survive extreme temperatures, establish a well-defended and self-sustaining settlement, keep surviving endless attacks until you die/escape everyone in a spaceship.
Imagine if you could expand it to such things as defeat/take control of/make allies with a different colony, found a new settlement nearby, capture 10 other towns/outposts and ultimately establish a state, why not *dreams*

I just imagine the other factions being gigantic(the ones you get gigantic constant raids from  ) They would be split into perhaps a main city and then maybe a town or two. And a bunch of camps. The camps would be similarly sized to your colony, the towns would be giant(larger than the map), but you could try to shoot the place up. And the city would be death to the colonists you send there.

I don't think being able to capture places would be a good feature, but taking out camps and looting them would work. I don't think this will be put in the game however, because it shifts the games theme from surviving on a rimworld to attacking towns and trying to concur everybody. Perhaps after rimworld has been released there could be a dlc called "On the attack" Or something of that sort. I would enjoy fighting threw city streets with my gang of raiders with rimworld's combat mechanics(Like the combat demo from the pack of failed rimworld ideas)

<This is suggestion comes up quite frequently, if you do a bit of digging, you can find multiple threads discussing it.>

[ImNatalie]

...To be 100% honest with you, this idea is too complex and too large to actually be implemented. It is a good idea, but it is just too much for the creator of the game. (Obviously, because RimWorld is still in its Alpha phase.)

[Bullfrog1]

Anything like this would at best be a long way out. Though I do hope we get to stretch our legs some day. I would love to explore with out starting a entire new colony each time.