I think a lot of these are good suggestions, as you say there are a lot of things we could do to make the game better.
While you have been away we have moved to a different process for planning. After each release we have a discussion about what to do in the next release and decide on a small chunk of work to do. Because there is a lot we could do the goal of that discussion is to pick out what are the most important things to do next, the things which have the best awesomeness to effort ratio.
You can see the last discussion here and also the list of github issues here. We also discussed it on the podcast and on discord. The next release is almost entirely about the patch map and it’s mechanics.
I think a lot of the fact that we have been making good progress comes from having a more focused method for deciding which way to go next.
So yes with your ideas feel free to bring them up in the 0.4.3 discussion, everyone is welcome to contribute with what they think are the next things we should do. There’s some good stuff on your list and as some of it is small things they can be good as they’re nice things to get done quickly.