Rescued kerbals are all female?

[space jake]

It seems that this isn't exactly the norm, but I've seen a few other reports of it.

Here's one on steam, in which the poster claims to have seen around 15 rescue contracts, all of which are for females. Probability of that happening is 2^-15 = 0.003%. Granted, the poster perhaps could have crafted a better thread title to avoid a dogpile.

Here's one on this forum. No numbers given.

Here's another on this forum. No numbers given. Notably, one respondent says he/she only gets males.

I've rescued seven kerbals and passed on at least four other rescue contracts. All of them female. Chance is 0.05% of happening randomly.

Googling to find complaints of only rescuing males comes up empty. Maybe this is confirmation bias, but I doubt it. There are a lot of people playing this game, but probably not enough to chalk all the above up as coincidences. I wonder if there are some issues with the random number generator, or how it's seeded.

This isn't detracting from my enjoyment of this fantastic game, of course. Mainly I'm just curious how many others are seeing this. If it's a configuration issue, I'm on a Mac OS 10.10, running KSP 1.03. I have more mods than I care to enumerate here.

And for what it's worth, if I get a contract to rescue a male kerbal, I'll happily post up that I'm wrong.

[Tery215]

I have 2 male kerbals that came from rescues in Kerbin orbit.

There might be a problem with your save, I'm not sure.

[Mister Dilsby]

The odds of having 2 rescue contracts be the same gender Kerbal are 2 in 4 (four possibilities: MM, FF, MF, FM)

The odds of having 3 rescue contracts all the same gender are 2 in 8...

The odds of having 4 rescue contracst all the same gender are 2 in 16...

Now, how many people are playing this game? Even if you go up to 15 Kerbals or more, it is VERY likely that someone, somewhere, is getting all males or all females. If the probability is .003%, then about three of every hundred thousand players should see all females and another three out of a hundred thousand will see all males.

ETA: the forum censored the word 'ess ee ex" above. Have changed to say "gender" instead, even though that is not correct in this case. /pedantic

Edited June 5, 2015 by Kuzzter

[space jake]

Added a poll to generate some more data.

Thanks for the replies so far.

[Barking Sands]

I love doing rescue missions because it's both fun and it's a great way to bypass that exorbitant cost of new hires. I see more females in need of rescue than males, but it's just barely noticeable. I could definitely see having 10 females in a row, but I haven't had it happen myself yet.

From what I've personally experienced, the probabilities of a female vs. a male in a rescue mission is about the same distribution as kerbals available for hire in the Astronaut Complex.

I also think that the Steam forum post on this topic was a troll. A very successful troll.

[tater]

I saw this thread a month ago, and figured there was nothing to it. I've had 2 careers now (different mods setups) with zero male rescues. I've declined many, many (over 50), not a single male. In the latest, I've made a point to decline all the female ones just to see what happens (I accepted one of them), I have 4 females, and 3 males ready to be assigned, so the program is already female heavy (in case the game checked the ratio before generating rescues). Not mostly females, no males, not one. The previous career was the same.

[Estel]

12 rescue contracts, all female. 2 scientists - 3 pilots - 7 engineers

[Joonatan1998]

Something I have been wondering is, does the game try to force players have equal amounts of both genders?

I mean, if you have more male kerbals then astronaut complex and rescue missions have more females. (and vice versa)

In a recent career I had, I had all kerbals availabe for hire be female when most kerbals I had alive were male.

Probably just a coincidence, but with others posting similar things...

[DarkMoon]

Right now I've rescued 5 females and 1 male. In the available contracts, there's 1 for each gender.

At the astronaut complex, the applicants are 5 male and 2 female. I never hired anyone.

It does seem a little biased. Maybe that is just how kerbal biology works?

[tater]

I played a couple hours last night and declined as many rescues as I could stand clicking on... every one female. I now have 2:1 females to males. The applicants are balanced, but rescues are 100% female. I accepted a few, none were pilots, 50/50 engineer/scientists.

[BlkBltChemie]

My first career save (v1.0.2) gave me a fairly even split with 8 female 11 male rescue missions. (These are only the ones I accepted and completed - no info on declined or passed.) They were also interspersed pretty well usually alternating between male and female.

After updating to v1.0.4, I started a new career. My first 4 missions were all male rescue missions. The 16 (and counting) after that have been female. Additionally, I have deleted I don't even know how many (random guess >10) all of which were female. I have not gotten a single male rescue mission since those first 4. It could just be the probability and statistics.

One other thought is mods. I generally play all stock, but I did install the Asteroid Day Mod when it came out. 1.0.4 came around June 23. The asteroid day mod came out about a week later around June 30. I'm almost positive that all of the male rescue missions and several female rescue missions were completed in that first week prior to adding the mod. I wonder if...for some unknown reason...the addition of this or any other mod is affecting the rescue contract gender bias? Anyone else have any thoughts/observations along this line?

[tater]

I have the asteroid mod as well.

[tg626]

I'll add my name to the list. So far 8 rescues, all female, 6 pilots, one scientist, one engineer.

[DSKY]

Is there a development suggestion here?

[tater]

I think a mod moved the thread here from general. It's a possible bug report, really. If nothing is broken, then it's a suggestion to fix it.

[Layereddiagram]

I just completed 2 rescue contracts simultaneously; one male, one female. If there are any issues, they don't show up for me.

[Coga19000]

Well, my contacts are evenly distributed between males and females.

[tater]

I voted it was a mix, then the last 2 careers have been 100% females, and instead of ignoring rescues, I've been declining most of them to get more... all female.

what sets the ratio, and how could a mod screw it up? Might be useful to know if mods can inadvertently mess with this.

[Remi]

I have seen 11 or 12 contracts now, all female. No idea what is going on, maybe a mod is affecting the ratio? I run a lot of mods.

[Fazaman]

I posted about this on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/3dkjdj/all_of_my_shipwrecked_kerbals_are_female/

Of my 20 kerbals on my roster:

http://i.imgur.com/WqnocTk.png

http://i.imgur.com/fSO8OxM.png

... besides the original 3, every single one I've gotten from (non-selectively) rescuing and every single one is female. Plus, I've turned down countless other rescues (I go for the quick easy 'orbit of kerbal' ones to bulk up my ranks) and every single one is female. All of the ones I've rescued, and all of the ones I haven't. They're all female. I understand RNG, but this is crazy. The chances of this happening randomly (2^16 for just the ones in my roster. Probably something like 2^40 to include the ones I've turned down) are basically impossible. There must be either a bug in KSP, or in one of the mods I'm running.

BTW, I have one rescue currently underway... for another female.

[space jake]

Jeb must keep "accidentally" erasing the alert transmissions from the stranded male pilots.

Bad Jeb!!

I'm still seeing 100% females, btw. No idea how many I've passed, but we're definitely somewhere in 6 sigma territory. What a weird bug.

[DrGonzo94]

I definitely got 100% females in rescue missions. I think this started after I added Asteroid Day and Kerbal Construction Time. And oh, I also upgraded to Windows 10.

[NyxKordel]

Same here. I run Mods too. All contracts will spawn a female kerbal. I noticed that all my V.I.P. missions are 100% female as well. Some Developer feedback would be nice.

[Just Jim]

Yup, same here... I can't remember one male rescue, and I've done around 25 now

[NyxKordel]

I removed the Asteroid Day MOD and now I am getting Male Kerbal missions again.