Bots not spawning

Total noobie here, so stop reading now if you get annoyed by dumb questions.

Running a dedicated server under steam. I want to use the min_bots and max_bots settings to always keep a number of bots playing. The problem is that bots are not spawning.

min_bots 0
max_bots 14

max players on server is 24.

If I add bots from the server console they spawn and play, but eventually they all get kicked and the server is empty again.

Now, if I add a number of addbot commands to the podbot.cfg file, new bots are added when the map changes, but bots are not being added otherwise.

I must be missing something obvious...

[sPlOrYgOn]

what version are you using?

POD-bot 2.6 metamod. 5/11/2004
MetaMod 1.17.2
admin_mod 2.50.60

plus a handfull of plugins

don't know if it is related, but after running for a while the server crashes with this message:

Fatal Error - Dedicated server
SZ_GetSpace: Tried to write to an uninitialized sizebuf_t: ???

I've got podbot.cfg set to addbot seven times, just to get some bots in the game.

[sPlOrYgOn]

yea that version has some problems with min_bots and max_bots.
it's best to update.
goto the thread that's called something like Come Here to get the Podbot2.6mm in the main pb2.6mm forums

Okies, found PodbotBETA.zip dll 8-15-2004, we will see how it goes. Thanks for the replies.

Still no good. Bots still not spawning. min set to 0, max set to 23, 24 players maximum on server. As an experiment I added 23 bots. When I added the 24th bot the server console was spammed with a message that maximum number of bots had been reached. It was stuck in a loop. Any suggestions?