The ribbon width is whatever the default is, I think 125 tiles. I couldn't tell exactly how far the biters had to roam before new ones spawned. I was too busy not dying. My guess would be 10 tiles, from the spawning_radius in the data file.

Circling large hives is how I normally whittle them down ...

I tried some tests -- these are on a deathworld with a current evolution factor of 0.8439:


Single nests spawned up to 7 biters and stopped.
Respawning all 7 after wiping them out took ~32s, or ~4.5s/spawn (eyeballed with a stopwatch, not very accurate).
Leading biters several chunks away did ...

In my current game, a ribbon deathworld currently at blue tech, wading through enemy nests is becoming quite the slog. The same map structure that makes it easier to defend my base makes it easier for the biters to defend theirs. The biggest problem has been getting close enough to reliably hit the ...

I have a recurring problem with outposts. When they run dry, and I want to tear them down, deconstructing the local logistics network becomes a hassle.

Getting rid of the outpost machinery works fine: I use a deconstruction planner with all logistic- and power-related-structures blacklisted. Once ...