1. are you using the UWE patch? even so uwe nerfs a lot of the overpowered strats you would use in vanilla kenshi and well, skeletons are beyond op (limb health, no need for food, almost no bleed, not edible, not slavable, skeleton repair beds are op, etc.)
2. even without uwe adventurers guild is pretty balanced imo (much more than recrutable prisioners), and lore wise skeletons are not only rare but tend to aim for their own goals, not just joining any group. humans, hivers and shek are not only much easier to find but also much more willing to join groups.
so yeah, balance and lore wise i think it makes sense skeletons are very expensive, they are superior in combat and cheaper to maintain, even free if they don't get damaged

@Vazera I don't think it makes sense lore wise, nor is it balanced. There are several skeletons you can get to join you, and you sometimes find them as drifters. You see many of them working with the tech hunters, other factions, or just being bodyguards. Is that life so different than working with a medium to high level faction that is adventuring and building a community?

I understand that a big part of this game is training up your people, but that gets harder to micro manage the bigger your squad gets, and the issue is compounded when you try to micro manage multiple groups...simply because of how the game works. The more directions you start going at once the more this game chugs, struggles, and starts having crashes.

There does come a point where it would be nice to be able to hire recruits at least close to your level. It this way Recruitable prisoners makes the most sense, lore wise, even if it is a little simple. Most of the options have appropriate difficulties too.
-You defeat an enemy that attacks you because they are hungry? They realize you're stronger,
organized, and able to feed them. They join you for survival.
-You capture some of the stronger ninja guys(20s-30s )and show them respect? They may
join you.
-You capture a member of a major faction? You have a really low percentage to get them
to join you. And, even with the right dialog choices, after a few attempts they just say no
permanently.
-Mercs want 20-40k+ cats, each. Some people want more than that. And that is often for
characters with some stats in the 30s...maybe 40s. To put that into perspective, Kang costs 6k,
and his stats can be up in the mid 20s. You're paying 4-7x that for a rando with similar stats
with Recruitable Prisoners. Even someone with double his stats can be 7x+ more to recruit.

If you also run Bounties Galore and the RP patch, then it can be a little broken.

@Mitsurugi

About recruitable prisioners being lore accurate i absolutely agree, no doubt in that would make a lot of sense.

The problem is balancing, default Kenshi its much harder to obtain people, and your cap is much lower, and both of these mods break this balancing, Kenshi seems balanced (by vanilla) to have one squad that you train well and not an army, which trivializes as much of the game as stealth.

About skeletons, they are indeed rare, none of the major factions have skeletons (UN has rarely, other ones dont), and even in places they live and are welcome they are a minority (except for Black Desert City).

The adventurers guild having trouble finding random unaffiliated skeletons willing to join a random faction makes sense, as opposed to organic beings which thrive in societies, and most of the time are desperate to join a faction that can feed them.
In vanilla kenshi getting skeletons to your party can be very hard if you dont know where to look, most of them are not in cities, they are in recluse locations dangerous to get to.

Yeah training people from 0 after you already have a decent squad sucks, hopefully Kenshi 2 solves that.