As a new player who just coincidentally happened to start right after the overhaul launch, I don't have any bias about what it was like before, other than from some things I've read. I can definitely say it plays better than it SOUNDS like it did before.

Building materials in the very very early game IS a hassle. On the other hand, scaling up in order to get pretty blocks (bricks and cobblestone) to build a nice base feels good, like the castle I'm eventually going to build was an achievement. If I were to make a suggestion to solve the early game issue: make another block, similar to the wooden flooring, that is called something more generic like "flimsy plywood." Make it ugly and plain, and make it split from logs at like 1->16. Similarly, make the mud bricks recipe produce MUCH more per recipe.
These aren't materials anyone wants to build with, but making them very cheap and plentiful should provide a leg-up in the early game. (People who don't care about aesthetics are probably the people who will be happiest about the efficiency.)

For making building interesting and rewarding, I think there's some simple middle-ground options that don't add too much complexity (or pathing) to the game, since it IS a labor-efficiency game at the core. What happened to me, as I continued playing, is that the most efficient structure tended to be a giant multi-floored cuboid, with giant barracks arrays of bed-crate-floor-station crammed side to side. That room structure works for everything but harvest stations, currently.

Here's my recommendation- create a "room" zoning function to designate cuboids as rooms. For a room to be valid, require it to have walls and ceiling, with some allowance for doors/stairs. (Think like, at least 90% of each plane of the room must be adjacent to a solid block.) Next, apply bonuses/penalties according to the blocks in the room- really just a few, though. Ideas are:

1. If a bed is in a room with a work station, the colonist "wakes" a couple hours later.
2. If a bed is in a room with no more than 2 beds total, the colonist wakes an hour earlier.
3. A compound x0.9 speed penalty for every distinct workstation type in the room.
4. A 1.5x speed boost to workstations that are in rooms, or a 0.75x penalty to workstations not in rooms, so that the system isn't ignorable.
Anti-5: DON'T punish big rooms/too many beds or stations. The point is to encourage more specific rooms, not to encourage tedious wall-building.

Mid-late game the rooms could be upgraded with special blocks or furniture for small non-stacking bonuses, tool cabinets and the like. You could also create a "porter" workstation- while a colonist works it, all other colonists in the same room can treat their workstation as a crate. (This'll cut down on crate spam, which currently is "just correct.")

What this would lead me to do, at least, is construct more rooms and hallways, so that my workshops can be separated, and to build multiple nearby barracks/bedrooms to minimize their travel time at start and end shift.

All of that said, I'd also make it less punishing/tedious to build. I'd like to see a few builder/digger tech upgrades in the mid-game:
1. Builders/diggers don't need crates
2. Builders/diggers work faster
3. More builders/diggers can work a single construction spot. This one is particularly annoying and tedious when building structures of any significant complexity/size

#2 and 3 could be colony point upgrades, or just tech upgrades, or whatever. Anything so that I am not grinding my teeth as I place and break crates and spam-click construction spots.

For some reason my mind came to Counter: Strike when I saw the CS, which
obviously meant Colony Survival, but still.

Just make it so I can get stone bricks without having to unlock stuff. You bastards.

i love the game and the dev team, not only do you support mods but you try them out as well. I cant wait to see where this game goes, colony survival is my new favorite game in my steam library.

More decoration blocks would feel very satisfying and is the only issue I currently have with the game when it comes to building structures in the colony. Windows, banners, picture frames, plant pots, tables, chairs, better looking stairs with the ability to place them upside down or vertically for the use of more unique looking designs on structures. The list can go on, but again, more decoration blocks would add a very comforting feel to the colony that I and many others have always felt was needed.

you don't really have to change the game to force buildings. The recent update, which removed the ability to craft most building materials by hand, clearly indicates that the game doesn't really want you to start building stuff anyway, it wants you to focus on resource management and assigning jobs. If you create more decorative blocks, new textures, colors and shapes, the builder part of the playerbase will find the process itself of building stuff from them rewarding enough.
I mean, the "stairs" are still untextured solid-color, and there are no other shapes, so building anything other than big cinderblocks is a massive hassle at best, and a waste of time at worst, because why do it? Very few available materials. There's not THAT few, but some really don't go well together, so you're limited on what textures you'll use to 3-4 materials, and you can only do it with full blocks and nothing else, the stairs can't be placed on sides of blocks and don't mesh well with anything.
If you wanna build anything other than walls and then big cubes to house colonists, you got no/few resources to work with, very few materials to pick from, and no possibility to add any detail to your stuff. So why bother.

And the game constantly demands you to keep an eye out for zombie attacks, number of tools, meals, and overall how you're providing for your colonists and balancing your numbers. Which, by the way, is still subpar, either there still aren't good ways to check who does what, you just have a very general overall screen for how many people you have, but no easy way to handle crafting new things, you still have to visit each crafting station and hope you reached the right person to change what they create. So clearly, the game doesn't want you to build until very late game, where you have your colony stabilized and fully self-sufficient, with enough extra people to produce decorative blocks en-masse, and large enough banner space to allow you to build frivolous decorative buildings and not just practical robot camps where colonists sleep in giant battery arrays or right next to their job. But by then, you already have a huge established base, and changing all of it just for decoration's sake is once again a big undertaking that most people won't do.

for once id like to see a blogpost about new major content

How to fix the issue of not "Needing" to build anything
--Make job blocks need a area around them to work or work better (same idea for bed rooms and dormitories)
----Rooms like farms that need walls and a roof
----or could set a designated area for each job like a farm/dig/build area

How to add a need for towers
--Add monsters that flys and only special jobs can aim for them
----monsters could stay x blocks from the ground till near flag

To make no "no access" to flags (for fliers if flag is underground) and reasonable farms (no farm towers) have them look for sky (or air blocks or could have special light blocks) for x blocks up, and / or have flying mobs aim for plants on farms (not the farm job but product). fliers could be the entity that does the check for sky access.

In regards to the building thing, maybe it could be an idea to add an advanced form of the builder-worker that you can unlock pretty deep into the tech-tree that allows you to build copies of blueprints? I'd imagine it would function in a way like this: You put down 8 "planner" blocks that together form some kind of cubic shape with around a previously made building or structure, and then outline an area somewhere else with matching x and z area size. This new builder (could be named copier, architect, or just be a regular builder assigned to the frame) would then start placing blocks as per the layout outlined by the 8 "planner" blocks within the designated building area. It would cut down the hassle of stuff like towers and town houses quite a lot, since those tend to be fairly samey anyway. That said, other games have shown such ideas to be lag-fests, so it might be harder to pull off than I think.

The first thing that comes to mind for incentivising building is checks and bonuses based on the blocks around your colonists; colonists could get a productivity bonus if their bed has blocks above it that increases depending on what the block is (for example, a wooden roof is better than just a dirt roof) and/or doesnt have other beds adjacent to theirs, work faster if there's colourful blocks around their workstations, decorations along their commutes, etc. Even if the bonuses are only small, or could be minmaxed for some funky looking 'builds', it'd serve pretty effectively as encouragement for using all those otherwise useless and expensive lategame blocks.

Something that I am not liking so far about 9.0 is the removal of the grocer. now, (as far as i am able to tell) colonists are only able to eat at the colony flag, severely limiting how far away you can place any jobs, buildings, etc. I've looked into profugo's discussion and I am inclined to agree. I've immediately noticed the restrictions on building with the removal of cobblestone blocks and being able to craft wood planks. It removes a lot of early interactivity with the game, reducing it to merely waiting for things to be produced. I think that removing cobblestone bricks is perfectly fine, and an interesting idea, but additionaly removing wood also takes away any building capabilities. even building a simple house to enclose beds takes a large portion of the meager 200 wood you receive at the beginning.
Though to counter a bit of what profugo did say, I did devise a pattern of apartment building that works with a tiered farm setup. By making raised farms (in simple 10x10 bricks of dirt with brick/wood lining) and attaching each platform to a level of an apartment building, you can shorten walking times for your farmers, at the least.
i think that being able to assign certain colonists to certain beds could fix this problem, making it so you could make individual rooms/apartments beside/near the job site.
another user did mention having some sort of bonus to workers who had their own rooms, which I think does have some merit.
Regardless, I've been playing colony survival on and off for the past several years, and have loved watching the development of this game. I think that the changes between versions have been immense, and the graphical quality has always been incredible. Much love to pipliz and zun, keep up the good work!

Some notes about things I think would improve the game:
- Replace horizontal elevators with trains able to alter direction and change altitude. It makes a lot more sense, and would actually be useful for traveling between outposts.
- Add an analyst NPC which is able to inform you about which resources you are lacking. It could possibly be used to autonomously move workers that don't do anything to other jobs if manpower is lacking.
- Implement a blueprint system, similar to Factorio. The current system for digging is clunky as there is no way to select a set of materials to remove, and no way to save that selection. There is also no way to remove any kind of dirt+grass or any kind of stone. One thing that makes building with colonists hard is that they can only build straight lines of a single item. It would be a lot easier if an area could be selected, and the colonists could be ask to make an identical structure in another place. The way colonists have to be outside the area is also a bit limiting, for example when adding another floor. Usually it requires building some temporary place they have to stand, and sometimes it's easier to just build manually.
- The new gliders are too weak, and make it hard to explore outside of a small area. Also, since the banner area only protects a number of blocks upwards, it's not possible to make towers tall enough for the normal glider to be usable, unless one makes outposts in between that are just for launching the glider further. Even the launched steel glider is just barely enough to travel between outposts. There should definitely be some way of creating a tall structure that monsters cannot spawn on if gliders are supposed to be usable. To be able to explore further, a hot-air balloon or a simple airplane seems necessary.
- Make it possible to upgrade the player's breaking speed. A lot of things cannot easily be built by colonists, so the player has to build it instead. The slow breaking speed means that leaves are the most efficient wall, as placing and removing a log breaks a lot of blocks at a time, and it's easier than marking an area for the colonists, unless the area is completely flat. Because the border is ever expanding, it's hard to invest in proper structures util very late-game.
- Make more and cheaper decorative blocks. There are currently a shortage of blocks for making nice roofs, and less blocky bridges. And a lot of the more flashy blocks feel too expensive to be used in huge amounts.

Love the new update! I've been playing/following for years and this is the best iteration I've played so far. Great job!

I knew that would happen to the outposts. I swear communities are never satisfied, they need atleast 1 thing to complain about

This is probably the only game, that i know of, that listens to its community, talks about it with the community and then acts. Rather than what i see a lot of other studios, which do things the opposite way round.