... it does make some sense in an early life of a colony to work around the land features rather than being able to easily level everything from the start. I think there are two factors that are making this hard for me to deal with... first, I tend to drop my colony in the starting area without exploring for a more suitable site. I didn't have to go far when I could bulldoze the land to perfection. Second, I build with the thought that my decisions are permanent parts of my colony. The full sized farm I build at the start will anchor my colony and my colony will grow from that spot. When I place my first kitchen and carpentry shop, they will continue to be the heart of my colony.
That is what I do. If it's a balance thing, it might make sense to change levelling terrain to use an action bar, and I guess it would be a construction skill (if rolled into the building) Though we still "need" to be able to flatten wherever due to stockpiles and farms. "We will cover these forests in Progress."
Same, I do a carpentry shop, kitchen and farm right away. I start so many colonies (well I guess we all do) that I'm way too impatient to bother flattening all the nearby terrain before I start building anything.
There's one element potentially missing from this in economic terms: tools. Flattening, forestry, surface node mining, burial, construction, farming... All spawn and delete shovels, axes, hammers, etc on demand rather than requiring colonists pick up and return them as real objects. If this changes as (apparently?) intended, it's another possible constraint on how many jobs of similar type can be in progress simultaneously (which the player can expand via production or trading, or be contracted by theft or destruction).
Tools were in the original design and indeed the first implementation of work generally. It wasn't pretty. And it was a bit too Dwarf Fortress, all told. And do you really want your tools locked behind the Metalsmith? Or destroyed by attacks? Or maybe put into a transitional carpentry/metalworks hybrid workshop for early game which would have to be upgraded to something something complex, then someone drops their axe in the woods next to a fishperson and you never see it again. (Side-note: Terrain flattening is temporarily removed in Alpha 47B due to overhaul of building system.)
We know, we know... I was just bored and decided to do the mental gymnastics of considering it as a valid design change...
