What triggers rescue contracts?

[Vanamonde]

I like to get most of my flight crews as freebies from rescue missions, but I have been offered zero rescue contracts in my last few career campaigns. How can I get some? 

[Superfluous J]

Unless you modded the game, rescue contracts should never go away. However they can get rare if you decline them enough.

If you don't mind a bit of savegame editing, check out this portion of your persistent.sfs file:

	SCENARIO
	{
		name = ContractSystem
		scene = 7, 8, 5, 6
		update = 3561970.9249325888
		version = 1.7.1
		WEIGHTS
		{
			...
			RecoverAsset = 20
			...
		}

That handles all "recover" stuff and I'm very pretty sure that includes Kerbals. Bump that number up to 90 or 100 and you should start seeing them.

[bewing]

You have to have gotten kerbals into orbit, and they need EVA capabilities -- so lvl 2 Astronaut Complex. Also there's a minimum Rep requirement.

 

[Vanamonde]

I haven't declined any because I didn't want to discourage them, but I've had several campaigns where I simply wasn't offered any. Odd. 

Thanks for the replies. 

[Geschosskopf]

5 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

I haven't declined any because I didn't want to discourage them, but I've had several campaigns where I simply wasn't offered any. Odd. 

Thanks for the replies. 

It can be that way at times.  Which is why I routinely use Custom Barn Kit and set the price of hiring to some fixed nominal figure.  After all, in my universe, the astronauts are all pressganged vagrants or the sweepings from His Majesty's prisons, so the only costs involved are purely administrative.  But even if you have a different headcannon, the newly hired crew are utterly untrained so it's stupid to pay them like they're gods.

[michal.don]

I don't have the solution for the missing contracts, but for getting new kerbals I use the "create kerbal" option in the cheat menu, without feeling like cheating at all. I also like the random name generator and always shuffle through the names until I get one that's funny/cool/whatever...  Yes, the new kerbals come for free that way, but I always disliked the stock approach, where you need to decide if you want to upgrade two KSC facilities or hire one lvl 0 kerbal for the same amount of funds...

Michal.don

[Aeroboi]

I know that if you accept the other type of contracts like part tests, aerial and ground survey's they will pop up much more often. For some reason part tests always remain and survey contracts always expand upon newly visited places. So if you go to the Mun first you always have those contracts available IIRC. That means you want to do the ground breaking contracts up to the Mun first.
If you opt to do the main contracts first I often find I get a healthy balance that always includes the rescue contracts if you have the proper facility upgrades. I believe I ran stuck in doing multiple early survey's and then complained I didn't got the rescue contracts that I expected should spawn. When not fulfilling the survey contracts but doing all the others should clear room, by all means clearing the survey contracts should only increase it's spawn rate further.