Can you let us change the squad size and so on via the in-game mod settings menu?
For a death world the squad size of 10 just doesn't cut it and you can't make combinators early enough so you have to change the config file which can be a pain.

This would allow you to change the settings mid-game more easily and customise it for the start of a new game.

in a death world, if you need more control over things before you get combinators (really? they are early tech and cheap..) you can just put the droids into a chest and deploy them by hand in very large groups, or right in front of the nest you need help to destroy. Just put the droid item in your hand and spawn them onto the ground.

So save up 100 in a box, then take them all and go out to attack the biters and deploy all your 100 droids right outside the next, and keep them all together. You can command them with the squad selection tool too, or if you use Unit control mod you can command them that way too.

actually if you use the Unit Control mod, it totally disables the automatic squad hunting AI anyway, so you can spawn what you need, then control them like an RTS game in the way that you want (in large groups)