"It's about mortality, I suppose."

 How dangerous is this world, and what are the stakes? What happens when some smarmy player tells a group of colonists to start running as far as they can into some dangerous area?

• Should colonists be able to die? How rare/hard-to-do should that be?
• On one hand, you want to let people get attached to these colonists and not be afraid that the game is gonna yeet them because your combat skills weren't good enough.
• On the other hand, some of my favorite memories from games are times when you got into trouble and there was some danger:
• The medic in Rimworld staying up all night to heal as many people as he could.
• The X-Com rookie pulling out that super clutch shot in a scary fight.
• Also X-Com: blundering into a room full of sectopods and having the "How are we going to get out of this one?" moment.
• Wildermyth spouse sacrifices themself for their other spouse to win a boss fight.
• Nate and his brothers fending off a sea monster in Valheim, trying to figure out whether to fight it or outrun it.
• Some weird ideas:
• There's something you can equip that makes you not die when you hit 0hp.
• Makes a weird situation of "well, would you ever go exploring without them? Does it become limiting because you feel like you have to have them or you'll be harshly punished?
• Maybe this "recharges" pretty generously.
• When somebody goes down, they don't necessarily die, but something has to happen to make them functional again.
• Cart them back to their house to recover?
• Med-kit-adjacent thing?
• This can effect relationships:
• Colonists who "rescue" others are well thought of.
• Maybe hurt colonists are grumpy at certain folks, but if they get help recovering, the relationships can be repaired and deepened.
• Healing time when somebody goes down.
• For a while, their speed and strength are debuffed. During this time, they want to do low-risk activities.

Add more thoughts if I've missed things.