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In addition to directly managing colonists with Drafting, you can change the default behavior for how colonists react to nearby threats when un-drafted in the Assign menu. By default, they are set to flee. Here is a screenshot.

I just tried a rename of a dryad in my current 1.3.3387 modded game and was able to, so I suspect it is a issue in one (or more) of your mods

I strongly doubt it, since I don't use any mods, nor do I have any downloaded.

I went to rename my first dryad I've ever had, I clicked the rename button and the rename window popped up, but I could not delete the default name it has (Berrymaker dryad 1). I also could not overwrite this default name with a new name. I wasn't sure if dryads were renamable, but they have the rename box, so I expected they would be once I saw that. Not sure if relevant, but it did recently need to use its healing pod after a raid and a second dryad is currently in a pod changing from immature dryad to berrymaker dryad.

Would be nice to have the idealigion editor accessible on the main menu, it takes so many clicks to get to it currently when starting a new game. I'd love to set up a number of "presets" for myself when I think of them without immediately playing as them that second.

I place fences around crops. Several medium/large sized herbivores have the "blocked by fence" modifier and this keeps them from eating my crops while allowing my colonists to just walk in from any angle and do their work.

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The latest infestation that made me have to reload a save was on a fairly early-game tribal society. I had maybe ~2800 silver, and like 3000 wool adding value because I raise sheeps because the tribe has the Rancher idealogy. I can't really destroy the wool, so it accumulates extremely fast. I got 4 hives, each with about 3 megaspiders, in addition to spelopedes and megascarabs. When I reloaded, I got a mechanoid raid instead, at the same time, with the same wealth, which consisted of exactly two scythers, both of which died easily to bows before ever closing to melee range. I had 5 tribals and 1 slave. I did not have smithing or electricity. Usually in tribal playthroughs, my first 2-3 years are spent getting the food supply stable.

The thing that makes them feel imbalanced to me is primarily comparing them to other raids. When my pirate raids contain 3 enemies (who flee after 2 are defeated), my tribal raids contain 6 people (who flee after 3 or 4 are defeated), my mechanoid raids contain 2 of the weaker mechanoids (who fight to the death), why do infestations contain ~12 megaspiders and ~20 total bugs when they ALSO all fight to the death? If it's because they stay still: That would make sense if they didn't expand their hives faster than my people can recover from their injuries, but that's not the case.

2800 Silver is way too much for a early game tribal. You can not sit on that kind of money without issues. Better to spend it with a trader. The markups and item wear will mean you loose overall wealth with every transaction.
It is especially good with consumeables like food, techplans, (psy)trainers.

3000 wool is also too much. You can burn the wool. All you need is a Molotov, Firethrower or similar weapon.
Or just store it unroofed outside and let it decay.

I do agree that maybe the "does not flee" part is not properly accounted for in the raid power calculation. But I had very few raids lately.
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I didn't get traders very often. I was saving the silver for specific things like techprints and such. This is really not an abnormal amount of wealth to have while waiting for an exotic goods trader. Also, I didn't have access to a fire weapon yet.

You can see your total wealth in history tab.

Well, if you are 2-3 years in, 4 hives is not to be unexpected to say the truth.

Also, which storyteller do you use? Randy give variable raid strength from 50% to 150% points to raid.

So maybe, you got unlucky and had a 150% raid strength the first time with the insectoid.

That being say, I agree with you that 2 scythers is much easier than 12 megaspiders ^^;

I definitely always pick Randy, but insectoids in general always seem to be signfificantly more numerous than much easier enemies in the same colonies, so I feel like it's more than that. For a while I played with infestations off entirely because of how broken they've always felt to me, but I'm trying to not turn off the number one main threat for a tunneling faction (especially since they demand insect meat!)

Infestation are not OP. They die like any other raid.
What are your armors?
What are your weapons?

Not unless you wait for seasons for them to spiral out of control first! And if you do that, you can always pack up and resettle the same hex.

One way to avoid infestations is to have the base be very cool. Like "need a Parka just to work" cool. This might cause issues with "Sleeping in the Cold", but it is a valid tactic to deter them.

Well it depends. Most of the time when I first encounter them, I have pants, shirts, and maybe some capes with bows and clubs for weapons.

But my big fear revolves around later-game experiences where the people in plasteel plate armor with warhammers and teams of chain-shotgun people behind them not even being able to put a dent in the starting population of a hive.

Capes are neither good armor nor good thermal resistance. They have a glaring lack of Blunt protection
For armors, you want dusters made from leather or full plate armor.

As for the lategame: Initial Infestations scale to colony wealth and population, same as all others. You success is what makes them powerfull.

I appreciate the tips, but I also know how things scale. My issue is that compared to other raids on the same colony, Megaspiders alone are usually more numerous than enemy soldiers. And a single megaspider, alone, is more difficult to fight - even with blunt damage focus, than three enemy soldiers combined.
I guess the issue I have is that when fighting bugs, melee is guaranteed. When I am fighting literally any other raid type, my goal is to whittle it down with sniper rifles before it can get close enough to be a threat. Infestations and mechanoids are usually the only raids where any colonists get hurt, but mechanoids feel conquerable, while infestations feel like I just need to get everyone in a caravan and leave.
I suppose what I really want to know is how to engage 3-4 megaspiders per colonist in melee without anyone losing their eyeballs or limbs.
I'm currently hoping my tunneler tribe will be able to use the leader combat bonus and melee specialists to do it, but starting out, my tribe is too small to justify having a melee specialist since they have so many restrictions on work type and we need a LOT of mining, growing, and constructing being done.

3-4 Megaspider per colonist while you haven't researched electricity seem a lot.
Do you still have 5 pawns at this stage? So, we are talking about 15-20 mega spider infestation here, right?

The first infestation I get are usually 1-2 hive, 3 max. And each Hive spawn 1 or 2 megaspider plus few smaller insect. No more than that.

Maybe your colony wealth somehow get out of control? How old is the colony? What is your wealth ? Which difficulty level ? Do you use any mod?

Anyway, at this stage, all you can do is fight at the door. You can use tamed animal (Just zone the area in front of the door and force all your animals that can go there. For exemple, elephants are pretty good damage soaker if you can get your hand on one) so it's not your colonist that is going to lose eyeball or limbs. =oP

The latest infestation that made me have to reload a save was on a fairly early-game tribal society. I had maybe ~2800 silver, and like 3000 wool adding value because I raise sheeps because the tribe has the Rancher idealogy. I can't really destroy the wool, so it accumulates extremely fast. I got 4 hives, each with about 3 megaspiders, in addition to spelopedes and megascarabs. When I reloaded, I got a mechanoid raid instead, at the same time, with the same wealth, which consisted of exactly two scythers, both of which died easily to bows before ever closing to melee range. I had 5 tribals and 1 slave. I did not have smithing or electricity. Usually in tribal playthroughs, my first 2-3 years are spent getting the food supply stable.

The thing that makes them feel imbalanced to me is primarily comparing them to other raids. When my pirate raids contain 3 enemies (who flee after 2 are defeated), my tribal raids contain 6 people (who flee after 3 or 4 are defeated), my mechanoid raids contain 2 of the weaker mechanoids (who fight to the death), why do infestations contain ~12 megaspiders and ~20 total bugs when they ALSO all fight to the death? If it's because they stay still: That would make sense if they didn't expand their hives faster than my people can recover from their injuries, but that's not the case.

untyped fine is 0.25 vegetarian, 0.25 any. (which I read as 0.5 vegetarian is fine).

Important note: 0.5 vegetarian is NOT fine. The other .25 needs to be either meat or eggs/milk.
If it actually uses the wording "any" then that is poor wording, but what's happening is the "balanced" meals are more efficient, while the vegetarian/carnivore specialist ones are not as efficient. This is because fine meals were balanced by their NEED for both ingredients, so a version that DOESN'T need both ingredients is imbalanced by comparison, thus it is re-balanced by needing more of the one type. Kinda like how the packaged survival meals take a huge amount of nutrition - it's to pay for a different strength. For packaged meals, it's that they don't rot, for specialist fine meals, it's that you can get away with only one ingredient type while still having fine. Normally, one-ingredient meals are, by default, simple meals.

And on that note OP: Set a bill for simple meals, go into details, toggle off all non-meat ingredients. You should be able to easily toggle off the entire vegetarian ingredient category at once. The reason there's no "specialized" simple meals is because simple meals are already very efficient in exchange for not giving a mood buff (which fine meals do).

Infestation are not OP. They die like any other raid.
What are your armors?
What are your weapons?

Not unless you wait for seasons for them to spiral out of control first! And if you do that, you can always pack up and resettle the same hex.

One way to avoid infestations is to have the base be very cool. Like "need a Parka just to work" cool. This might cause issues with "Sleeping in the Cold", but it is a valid tactic to deter them.

Well it depends. Most of the time when I first encounter them, I have pants, shirts, and maybe some capes with bows and clubs for weapons.

But my big fear revolves around later-game experiences where the people in plasteel plate armor with warhammers and teams of chain-shotgun people behind them not even being able to put a dent in the starting population of a hive.

Capes are neither good armor nor good thermal resistance. They have a glaring lack of Blunt protection
For armors, you want dusters made from leather or full plate armor.

As for the lategame: Initial Infestations scale to colony wealth and population, same as all others. You success is what makes them powerfull.

I appreciate the tips, but I also know how things scale. My issue is that compared to other raids on the same colony, Megaspiders alone are usually more numerous than enemy soldiers. And a single megaspider, alone, is more difficult to fight - even with blunt damage focus, than three enemy soldiers combined.
I guess the issue I have is that when fighting bugs, melee is guaranteed. When I am fighting literally any other raid type, my goal is to whittle it down with sniper rifles before it can get close enough to be a threat. Infestations and mechanoids are usually the only raids where any colonists get hurt, but mechanoids feel conquerable, while infestations feel like I just need to get everyone in a caravan and leave.
I suppose what I really want to know is how to engage 3-4 megaspiders per colonist in melee without anyone losing their eyeballs or limbs.
I'm currently hoping my tunneler tribe will be able to use the leader combat bonus and melee specialists to do it, but starting out, my tribe is too small to justify having a melee specialist since they have so many restrictions on work type and we need a LOT of mining, growing, and constructing being done.

The fungus darktorch says on both its information panel and its Architect description that it "Can be automatically refueled with wood." when it is actually, functionally refueled with fungus (as expected).

Did they change it in one of the small patches thus far? The first two slaves I had could absolutely be drafted and fight and be given weapons. Their likelihood to to rebel went to once every ~8 days from once every ~3.1 years when they had a weapon, so I only recommend giving them a weapon at the moment you need them to fight.

I could not draft them while unarmed.

Weird, I had no trouble drafting them. I used them as bait for attackers while unarmed and drafted. Maybe your slave was bugged?

Infestation are not OP. They die like any other raid.
What are your armors?
What are your weapons?

Not unless you wait for seasons for them to spiral out of control first! And if you do that, you can always pack up and resettle the same hex.

One way to avoid infestations is to have the base be very cool. Like "need a Parka just to work" cool. This might cause issues with "Sleeping in the Cold", but it is a valid tactic to deter them.

Well it depends. Most of the time when I first encounter them, I have pants, shirts, and maybe some capes with bows and clubs for weapons.

But my big fear revolves around later-game experiences where the people in plasteel plate armor with warhammers and teams of chain-shotgun people behind them not even being able to put a dent in the starting population of a hive.

Did they change it in one of the small patches thus far? The first two slaves I had could absolutely be drafted and fight and be given weapons. Their likelihood to to rebel went to once every ~8 days from once every ~3.1 years when they had a weapon, so I only recommend giving them a weapon at the moment you need them to fight.

I really would like to play tribal tunnelers with Idealogy, ideally ones that don't have to go outside in their day-to-day life (so no anima tree usage whatsoever) but I have one major problem:

Insectoids feel crazy overtuned to me, and since this isn't a widespread complaint, I'ma assume there's strategies I just don't know.

Ever since infestation got added as an event, I've had trouble building mountain bases because there's simply been no way to fight them. They have never felt balanced and always felt like an impossible-to-overcome deterrant to stop you building inside mountains. So I stopped building bases in mountains after a few failed tries to sustain mountain colonies.

Right now when I have an early colony with 5 tribals and I get an infestation, I get ~6 megaspiders. By comparison, if I get mechanoids, I get ~2 scythers. One megaspider is MUCH harder for me to fight than 1 scyther is, so this is very confusing for me.

My typical strategy for fighting insectoids is to give someone a blunt weapon and heavy armor, position them in a doorway, and have three people with guns behind them firing into them. This strategy causes extreme casualties and usually takes several reloads before it doesn't cause a total colony wipe.

I am aware of two major bug-fighting strategies. One is to use Vertigo Pulse, which is extremely effective, but relies on having a psycaster with vertigo pulse, something that is absolutely not guaranteed. The other is the whole "burn them out" strategy, but I've never had a colony where that strategy is viable without destroying too much of the colony for my colonists to survive and setting up such a colony seems like an extreme end-game scenario to me.

I don't want to turn insectoids off, and all the other raids seem appropriately scaled, but every time I fight insectoids there's just WAY too many of them for an enemy that always fights to the death of every unit. Games where I last longer the insectoids often outnumber my colonists 3 to 1 counting only the megaspiders. I really just don't know how I am supposed to deal with them.

So my question is this:
How do you guys consistently kill hives, before you've researched electricity, without usually losing any colonists?

Important note: I do not use mods, and won't be persuaded to use mods. I need only vanilla strategies.