Rescue contracts: bug or brainfart?

[N4CDLAW]

Started a new hard career with 1.1. Typically I end up grinding LKO rescue contracts to fill out my roster before advancing farther in the game, but for the life of me can't figure out why I'm not seeing any offered by Mission Control. Just went through 10 pages of contract offers without seeing one.

Progress so far:

1) Researched through Tier 3 R&D (the ones that cost 45 sci each).

2) Upgraded Astronaut Complex to enable EVA (and have tested same in LKO).

3) Unlocked maneuver nodes.

4) Completed many orbital tourist contracts. 

5) Rendezvous achievement (not docking, just passed within 2 km)

6) Mods: Kerbal Engineer Reduex for 1.1, Alarm clock, Field Experience. Also have Science Alert loaded into Game Data, but it isn't doing anything in 1.1. 

Any suggestions before I start troubleshooting by fiddling with installs and mods?

[N_Molson]

Well, I always wondered how so many Kerbals could end up stranded in orbit, so I wasn't fond of those contracts... But it seems you're right, I don't see any of them either.

[Kerbart]

That sounds weird. I'm on day six and I've got 4 of them as part of the team (including two picked up from Mun orbit) and a fifth one on the way. I would just continue to play and they'll come when they're ready.

[jwenting]

Let's see, my career currently has over 70 Kerbals working for it. I never hired any of them, they were all rescued. And I skipped some of the rescue missions.

[pandaman]

Personally I never really liked the idea of rescue contracts that placed random kerbals in places where no kerbal has gone before.  I felt a better 'scenario' would to replace these kerbals with parts from early 'test flights' that got into orbit due to technical failure.

[problemecium]

You guys are lucky.
As soon as I unlocked them (I'm not sure any more exactly what I did, but it was probably related to doing a rendezvous or orbital crew transfer), rescue contracts started spawning for me (as is to be expected). Not wanting to refuse and abandon the poor Kerbals to a tragic death in space, I accepted them. So the game decided I liked rescues and wanted more - thus it started spawning more of them. By the end of the day, I had nothing but piles of rescue contracts filling up Mission Control and couldn't make any money doing anything else :C

I of course tried opening the persistent.sfs file and manually weighting rescue contracts to -1000 to stop them from being offered. But alas! KSP is apparently programmed to not allow any weights below 10, and thus automatically reset the weight. And when I dared to actually rescue the Kerbals I had agreed to rescue, the game noted my progression and increased the weight to 18.
So far the only way I can avoid having piles of stranded Kerbals all over space seems to be by manually adjusting the weight every time I run KSP, or just being cruel and ignoring them :\

[Superfluous J]

In my new 1.1 career I can't decouple a booster without it hitting some poor sod who somehow got his plane cockpit stranded in LKO.

[Armisael]

I have a vague recollection that you have to do a munar flyby (maybe minmus counts) before rescue contracts start proccing. 

[Jarin]

15 minutes ago, parameciumkid said:

You guys are lucky.
As soon as I unlocked them (I'm not sure any more exactly what I did, but it was probably related to doing a rendezvous or orbital crew transfer), rescue contracts started spawning for me (as is to be expected). Not wanting to refuse and abandon the poor Kerbals to a tragic death in space, I accepted them. So the game decided I liked rescues and wanted more - thus it started spawning more of them. By the end of the day, I had nothing but piles of rescue contracts filling up Mission Control and couldn't make any money doing anything else :C

I of course tried opening the persistent.sfs file and manually weighting rescue contracts to -1000 to stop them from being offered. But alas! KSP is apparently programmed to not allow any weights below 10, and thus automatically reset the weight. And when I dared to actually rescue the Kerbals I had agreed to rescue, the game noted my progression and increased the weight to 18.
So far the only way I can avoid having piles of stranded Kerbals all over space seems to be by manually adjusting the weight every time I run KSP, or just being cruel and ignoring them :\

I ended up building a specialized heavy rescue vehicle that could grab them six at a time (3-man pod + hitchhiker). Too bad you can't farm them out to do odd jobs for extra money once they're back on the ground.

[problemecium]

See I'd do that, but I learned in the last version of KSP that having too many on staff makes the fee to hire new Kerbals outlandishly high - literally over a million funds apiece. So when I get a cool name like Bilbo or Elon, I can't hire the poor guy because I have too many Stevefreds and Gabtildas milling about >.<

[Waxing_Kibbous]

To the OP, if I recall the rescues start coming after the first Mun flyby, at least in 1.05- have you done that yet?

[Kerbart]

12 minutes ago, Jarin said:

I ended up building a specialized heavy rescue vehicle that could grab them six at a time (3-man pod + hitchhiker). Too bad you can't farm them out to do odd jobs for extra money once they're back on the ground.

Mine has a claw. So I can de-orbit their capsule while I'm at it.

[Hodari]

I've gotten plenty of rescue missions so far, so yeah...either you need to do a Mun flyby or some other prerequisite first, or you're just very unlucky with them so far.

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

Mine has a claw. So I can de-orbit their capsule while I'm at it.

And on a slightly off-topic note, speaking of the Klaw...is it just me or does it seem a lot harder to get it to actually grab on to the pods now?  Used to be as long as I was anywhere close, it would work, but now even coming in at 0.1m/s, if the alignment is even SLIGHLTY off and/or the pod isn't at just the right angle, it just bounces off a lot of the time.

[Draco T stand-up guy]

2 hours ago, Jarin said:

I ended up building a specialized heavy rescue vehicle that could grab them six at a time (3-man pod + hitchhiker). Too bad you can't farm them out to do odd jobs for extra money once they're back on the ground.

I'm running two Hitchhikers (Still don't have the three man pod):

Capable of getting to Mun and quite a bit of manoeuvring about it to rescue the poor souls stranded (there always appears to be some). Did one run to Mun with 5 tourists and picked up three stranded astronauts while there. IIRC, I picked up close to a million Funds for that run. Tourists are your goldmine - unfortunately they don't do much for science.

Back on topic, I can't recall when I started getting rescue missions but it was before I could actually do them as I didn't have any passenger compartments at the time. Now I'm wondering if it had anything to do with me turning down all the early info-gathering missions.

[Jarin]

2 hours ago, Draco T stand-up guy said:

I'm running two Hitchhikers (Still don't have the three man pod):

Capable of getting to Mun and quite a bit of manoeuvring about it to rescue the poor souls stranded (there always appears to be some). Did one run to Mun with 5 tourists and picked up three stranded astronauts while there. IIRC, I picked up close to a million Funds for that run. Tourists are your goldmine - unfortunately they don't do much for science.

Back on topic, I can't recall when I started getting rescue missions but it was before I could actually do them as I didn't have any passenger compartments at the time. Now I'm wondering if it had anything to do with me turning down all the early info-gathering missions.

Re-entering that thing must be fun.

[AbacusWizard]

12 hours ago, pandaman said:

Personally I never really liked the idea of rescue contracts that placed random kerbals in places where no kerbal has gone before.

If I remember correctly, marooned kerbals don't show up in a given location until you've at least sent something there.

Obviously this means the poor fellow stowed away on board your tiny uncrewed science probe and then fell off.

 

---

 

I don't mind doing rescue contracts--hey, a free rookie!--but it does bother me that the abandoned crew pods tend to clutter up low orbit. Sending the H-Wing to tow the junk onto disposal trajectories is fun for a while but that only goes so far.

Edited April 27, 2016 by AbacusWizard

[Superfluous J]

5 minutes ago, AbacusWizard said:

I don't mind doing rescue contracts--hey, a free rookie!--but it does bother me that the abandoned crew pods tend to clutter up low orbit. Sending the H-Wing to tow the junk onto disposal trajectories is fun for a while but that only goes so far.

Yeah I try to go up there with a Claw so I can pull it out of orbit as I'm saving the Kerbal. However it's still annoying. I put a lot of effort in keeping my orbits clear, and all this junk just gets in the way.

[Draco T stand-up guy]

4 minutes ago, AbacusWizard said:

I don't mind doing rescue contracts--hey, a free rookie!--but it does bother me that the abandoned crew pods tend to clutter up low orbit. Sending the H-Wing to tow the junk onto disposal trajectories is fun for a while but that only goes so far.

You can go into the Tracking Station, select them and hit Terminate. Be careful that you've got the right one selected though as it will kill any Kerbals on the craft so terminated.

[AbacusWizard]

Bah, the Terminate button is no fun. Real kerbalnauts do manual garbage disposal!

 

I'm usually rescuing stranded kerbalnauts long before I get the Klaw, and I've never found it to be very consistent anyway, so I usually go up later with a KAS harpoon gun.

[bewing]

I think having a klaw is an alternate trigger before you get any rescue contracts.

Edited April 27, 2016 by bewing

[Superfluous J]

4 minutes ago, bewing said:

I think having a klaw is the required trigger before you get any rescue contracts.

No the Claw is a prereq for "haul this piece of junk down to Kerbin" (and sometimes that piece of junk has a Kerbal in it that you have to save) but you CAN get rescue contracts for people in pods (but not have to bring the pods down) before you've unlocked the Claw.

Source: My game. I rescued several people and didn't have the Claw unlocked.

[eddiew]

Now that you mention it, I have a real lack of stock contracts of any kind... Most of it's coming from Contract Configurator, other than that I've only had the first space tourist. Hmm, time to review my weightings...

[bonyetty]

3 hours ago, AbacusWizard said:

Bah, the Terminate button is no fun. Real kerbalnauts do manual garbage disposal!

 

I'm usually rescuing stranded kerbalnauts long before I get the Klaw, and I've never found it to be very consistent anyway, so I usually go up later with a KAS harpoon gun.

I would argue that real Kerbanauts litter as much as possible. I was under the impression that Kessler syndrome is the end game of KSP. 

Edited April 27, 2016 by bonyetty

[Nightshift83]

11 hours ago, Armisael said:

I have a vague recollection that you have to do a munar flyby (maybe minmus counts) before rescue contracts start proccing. 

Seems right. Just did a first mun-flyby in new 1.1 career (wich was more of a lucky shot after since I was only going for Kerbin orbit but figured it could be enough for mun flyby - it was, although the 'homecoming' was pretty close, with a last drop of fuel I managed to dip into 45 km and aerobrake enough after 3 rounds).

Instantly got the first rescue mission. Day 6..

Edited April 27, 2016 by Nightshift83

[Nightshift83]

..And just realised it's not the old standard perfectly aligned LKO-mission but at 15000 km and maybe double inclination than Minmus orbit.