[Fixed - persists in 3.50] Former hirelings not available for rehire

[PALU]

It seems I'm never been able to hire anyone I've ever hired before (I can identify a lot of them by the fact that they carry equipment they received from me). It's perfectly understandable that people won't join up with me if people have gone missing (although I think they should give some leeway when the casualty was in the robber removal service), but everyone else I've hired previously invariably says "Not now, but maybe in the future".  Apart from losses cutting out villages, it also means all the highly skilled potential hirelings quickly become unavailable, which means higher losses as the trash mobs I have to recruit (villagers, peasants, and old men, as the hunters and woodsmen without missile weapons have all been hired before) die rather easily (although I'll probably get to use the newly introduced blood staunching of others ability soon, if I can find enough bodies).
This issue is on top of 90% of those I try to recruit say "Not now, but maybe in the future" (including the closest village, where nobody has ever wanted to join up, including the adventurer).

[Sami]

I wonder how many hirelings your characters has had? Approximately, at least?
Villages are so numerous that it's hard (for me) to think of running out of hirelings - but then again my playstyle can be a bit different

[PALU]

Well, I've had 7 robber quests with a sum of 29 robbers (the quest history can be useful to dig up this kind of info...). I try to have twice the number of hirelings to the robbers to make sure I have a very good upper hand as I hate losing people, although I've often haven't quite filled that number out, so it should be 50 - 55. My character wasn't particularly useful initially, but on the other hand I had only adventurers for the first one, and mostly adventurers for the second one. To find 11 for my latest 6 robber quest (just finished, without casualties, and a bleeding wound that closed up by itself within about two turns of me trying to heal it). That required visiting about 3/4 of all villages in the Reemi territory (not counting ones I haven't seen, of course: there's a single region a bit outside of the mapped area, and I haven't mapped all the way to the borders). I don't recruit anyone below adequate skill in a melee weapon, and I don't recruit anyone having a missile weapon in their inventory (too many deaths to friendly fire). As far as I've seen, craftsmen and women never accept, so I've given up on trying those (well, I did try one of each with acceptable skills, but was refused, as expected). The sage I tried wasn't interested, and I won't try kids.

Apart from robber quests, I only hire a single hireling for the corresponding game course task, as I see no reason for hirelings to do jobs by character can do and potentially gain skill points from.

[MrMotorhead]

Wow, how many winters does your survivor have?  I have only done a single robbers quest so I'm not exactly in a position to make many helpful comments here.  One thing that I noticed was that the NPCs I hired said something about being rewarded for their service at the end of the adventure.  I dismissed my party after the robbers were slain and they didn't ask for anything like I was expecting them to, so I followed them them and "D"elivered a share of the loot to each of them.  I wonder if they expect to be paid better than an equal share of loot if they will agree to join again in the future?

[PALU]

I checked the date, and it says the year is 20, which should be 4 or 5 years.

NPCs require stuff when you hire them, and if that is sufficient (and you haven't taken it back, more or less accidentally, such as picking up all the dropped weapons on the battlefield) they'll consider that to be enough. If they don't, they'll complain when you dismiss them, in which case you can hurry up to compensate them.

[Sami]

This is investigate thoroughly now and indeed, despite of their "maybe in the future" responses former companions did never reach proper status to be hired again. This is fixed now and companions can be rehired after a varying NPC dependant timespan from few months to full year.

Fixed - persists in current version 3.50.

[PALU]

Great!

Robbers beware (once the new version is out)!