I have a lot of ideas to write but I'll try to make it straight forward, just keep in mind that most of these ideas are wacky, they just to give some inspiration.
These are some smaller features that I think could add to the game:
- The game need to save even if you exit when you are in a secondary camp.
- Shovel - a new tool that would give you the ability to dig the ground.
- If you dig in brown surface you get some dirt, which be very useful cause dirt isn't common in a desert (and of course you can't dig forever, one block of ground can be mined once, or something like this).
- If you dig a yellow surface you get sand! which is a new material (it will be sold in the market at 0 price).
- You can't dig the gray surface (cause it's stone da).
- Mirror will now be built using 10 wood and 10 sand.
- Glass window is a new decoration which can be placed only on walls (built with 6 sand and 2 wood).
- Torch lamp is a new decoration. Its like a torch just prettier. Made out of 4 sand and 2 wood).
- Make the ability to lock a campmate's AI or any other way of putting different AIs on different campmates.
- It's quite hard to see what loot you get from chests and skellys, you can make the item you get have a fading '+1' next to it or make his square go yellow for a short while only to indicate that you got some more of it.
- Clay builds! I would love to see a new building variant and clay (water and dirt) would fit good I think. Especially of you add the shovel.
- Sandstone builds! Same as clay I hope to see more walls, doors and fences variants. Sandstone is sand and water.
- Water is really too common in this wasteland. make wells work only on certain spots in the grid so you won't be able to just place a well everywhere and get infinite water. When you in building mode and you hold one of the wells, the spots with water will have a bluish overlay on them to mark that wells will work in these squares.
- when you make future quests with bigger places, It could help if you make these places multi-grid locations. meaning when you walk the the edge of one grid you go to the other one immediately without the map in between.
- solar panels are too easy to make and just dominate every other generators and there is no need to make interesting combinations like lumber jack robot with wood burners. So make solar panels cost 15/20 electronics instead of 10.
Now comes the part when I write less realistic ideas but I like them very much so who cares:
- Mines! you can come across one randomly while exploring or you can make one a permanent location.
- Think like a bunch of sandstone walls together making a small hill. In the front there will be an entrance and when you go in, you go to a different grid which will be all dark. The floor is stone and from all sides stone walls and the room is in a shape of a cave or a tunnel with some branches.
- A bunch of stone and metals scattered around you can collect and new enemies could be there like miner moles and more.
- Oil deposits! they 're like the water spots I explained above, but you will have these spots only in your secondary bases to encourage players to make more then one base.
- And of course you need a really expensive machine to extract the oil. The oil extractor! It costs 300 metals, 150 mechanicals, 50 electronics and 30 plastic. running it costs 15 power.
- Raids!
- based on your camp level. every 800 base points the raid level is raised by 1. Raid is a random event that could occur in a camp with 1000+ base value.
- 10 seconds before the raid begins the player will get a message saying something like "A bunch of idiots with bats are coming to take your valuables...".
- The raid itself will be a minute of fighting constantly spawning punk looking raiders with bats. After a minute the raiders which left will run away and a message saying something like "run off you cowards!" will appear above the player.
- Of course with higher levels of raids the better the raiders are. in level 1 it's just bats and torches. In level 2 they'll have also some llamas and bows. In level 3 they'll have also some pistols and In level 4 they'll have almost only machetes, pistols, and shotguns.
- You can make a quest when you have to choose if to help some nice rancher or to go dealing with the raiders. If you make friends with the raiders, raids will stop occurring and the raider's leader could give you quests but you won't be able to go to the rancher's place without getting attacked. If you make friends with the rancher, raids will still happens and you won't be able to go to the raiders hide but the rancher will let you buy and sell at his litter market and give you some new quests.
- This game really need a way to move items automatically, I keep having to refill the wood burners and the marketing stands.
- One option is to make a transport robot, you choose an item and a placed object (currently only wood burners and marketing stands) and the robot will automatically go to the nearest crate/barrel and bring some items from it to the object.
- The second way is to add pipes to the game! which will transfer items from a crate/barrel to a placeable object. (pipe is 2 metal and 2 sand).
- If you add this you would probably want to add a supply switch that will turn on/off machine depending on how much of a certain item you have in store.
I read this again and wow almost every suggestion is inspired by Fallout or Factorio. I guess your game have some similar aspects with both games. Have a nice day reading this too long of a post :)