I had loot spawning initaially (test base spawning, with loot inside.) Wanted to build my own loot tables, so I followed the documentation on lone design. Now, when a base spawns, it has 0 loot inside.

rb.populate does not cause loot to spawn. as per the documentation it generates loot tables that you must edit (oxide/data/RaidableBases/Editable_Loot), and then you copy said loot tables where you want them to be used

Ok sweet. I forgot to reply, but I then used those loot tables and was able to get what I wanted spawning! Thanks for the quick response!