I've enjoyed having to plan around isolating my pawns more, keeping their bedrooms away from mechanical rooms (power, water), etc.

I don't want to be that guy to make a suggestion that's too much work, so I'll ask since I don't know if this would be a simple XML thing or a C# thing:

How much work would it be to give walls and construction material stuff different noise dampening ratings, similar to bedding textile softness? e.g. stone provides -3 step reduction in noise, metallic -2 step, wood/etc light materials -1 step. Or just a simpler -2 / -1 high/low material division.

I see that all the noise sources currently radiate noise pollution in a simple radius, ignoring walls. I know it's probably for simplicity. How much processing overhead would be created if each noise source also had to check for walls? Would the impact be worth the gameplay value? Could this be cached based on the map tiles, then infrequently updated (to catch when the player changes/remodels the buildings)?