New recruits spawning question

[Madscientist16180]

Hi gang!

I'm getting ready to build stations in my career, and that got me to wonder about one thing. 

I want to hire more engineers, but the offered Kerbal list does not have any right now. What is the critera (if any), that spawn other potential recruits? 

I'm guessing it might simply be time, but would like to know for sure.

As ever, thanks in advance for your help.

[FullMetalMachinist]

Apologies, but I can't answer your question directly, because I've never paid attention to the kerbals available for hire in the astronaut complex. 

The main reason is I never hire new kerbals, and I suggest you don't either. Hiring new kerbals gets stupid expensive really fast (the cost is based off how many you currently have). 

Instead, I design an easy-to-use and reliable LKO rescue ship, and get all my new kerbals from rescue contracts. Why pay to hire new ones when you can get paid to rescue them. 

Granted, it is luck of the draw that decides how often they pop up, and what type the rescuee is (pilot, engineer, or scientist). 

If you need an engineer right now, then hiring is the way to go. But I steer pretty well clear of doing that. 

[Madscientist16180]

I do concur, normally i would wait on "save that guy" contract, but with my EPL and Kolonization install, i'm findind myself willing to pay for bright engineers, but they are few and far between lol. 

[KocLobster]

I'm sorry I can't provide a 100% definitive answer, but I am like 95% positive that there isn't anything you can do. It is just a matter of time and waiting for an engineer to be available for hire.

[Superfluous J]

I personally have no qualms editing the save file to set the profession of any Kerbal to be what I want it to be. So my suggestion is to rescue a Kerbal, exit to the main menu, then open your Persistent file (always make a backup!) and edit their profession from whatever it is to Engineer.

IMO the inability to do that was one of the biggest annoyances up to 1.0.5, and the change was one of the best additions in 1.0.5.

Edited March 29, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Spheniscine]

If you're willing to install a mod you can use KSI Placement Services, which allows you to pick the kerbal's profession, avoids unlimited ramping costs, and even pre-train them up to level 2.

[KocLobster]

11 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I personally have no qualms editing the save file to set the profession of any Kerbal to be what I want it to be. So my suggestion is to rescue a Kerbal, exit to the main menu, then open your Persistent file (always make a backup!) and edit their profession from whatever it is to Engineer.

IMO the inability to do that was one of the biggest annoyances up to 1.0.5, and the change was one of the best additions in 1.0.5

A lot of people (like me) like keeping the game pretty close to stock and not 'cheating' (sorry, lack of a better word) though.

[Madscientist16180]

2 hours ago, KocLobster said:

A lot of people (like me) like keeping the game pretty close to stock and not 'cheating' (sorry, lack of a better word) though.

Well, given the some mods i have make stock behavior useless, i would call this more like "working around the problem" than cheating. 

Tks all, both the mod and rewriting the files will be tried tonight, first time i'll ever try to change the persistant file, i think i'll make à back-up save of my back-uped back-up save just to make sure lol

[Madscientist16180]

Both solution worked as advertised

For a futur kerbaler would be squimish at trying to edit the persistant file for a lack of having ever done it but who encountercthe same "problem",it's really easy!