How to stop alien respawns?

[OzHawkeye]

So a friend and I want to play a game with masses of aliens (bases being both very common and very large), but we also want to stop them from respawning.

We tried the following command "/c game.map_settings.enemy_expansion.enabled = false" but it seems to have no effect, and still we (constantly) get new bases popping up all over the place - we even had one pop up on an island in the middle of a lake.

Is there any way to completely turn this off? Clearing out mega sized bases to get to an ore field is fun, but having to constantly clear the same area over and over is not so much.

Also, they seem to not be deterred by base structures being present - when we take out a "pop up base" we leave a 2x2 (so 4 all up) Sniper turrets set up surrounded by double walls - they're all over the place now, but still the bases keep spawning. I thought they wouldn't spawn within 3 chunks of any player made structures?

[torne]

They prefer not to settle near player structures when possible, but if they've already expanded into all the other space they'll eventually decide that being near your structures is better than nothing.

Disabling enemy expansion should work, though. Maybe you have to kill all the existing aliens, like you do when changing the peaceful setting, for it to take effect?

[OdinYggd]

Good fences make good neighbors.

The best way to stop biters from respawning is to establish a defended perimeter. They grow a big swarm of biters and then match to the area where the new base will be, then settle down to develop it.

If you have an armed defensive line, the swarm will never reach its destination. And you'll have lots of corpses piling up from the regular swarms being destroyed by your defense.