is there a new way to do this? i added necessary things to the index ini and the activities ini, but it still spawns the vanilla actors. it even does this when i remove the activities ini entirely!

Make sure you're stopping both Base.rte/Activities.ini AND Missions.rte/Activities.ini. Only thing I can think of.

Activities.ini in Base.rte is no longer used. If you look inside, it defines a robot2 with a pistol, riot shield, and heavy digger. The one you want to disable is the missions.rte version. If you want to keep the missions, though, you have to go in and start a block comment before "AddActivity = GABaseDefense" and end it at the end of the file.

EDIT: In case you don't know, a CC block comment begins with /* and ends with */
You may be more familiar with one-line comments, //

EDITEDIT: This probably belongs in support, rather than general. I dunno.

Please read the FAQ for information on how to have the CPU AI use installed mods.