'I believe OCS won't actively try to add records of type 'retrieved' into OCS buffers for dialing' - uh? Records in 'Retrieved' status are in OCS buffers.
You either have stuck records or simply the records in your calling list cannot be dialed are not in the 'select' criteria, e.g.out of from / to time window, personal callback where the agent is not there, not in the dialing filter etc.