I'd like to add that losing your armor on a failed expedition sucks, they took a lot of material and time to make, so this is very punishing. I just resorted to keeping them in storage most of the time. This makes the gameplay and combat feel more grindy, which is a shame. Plus I can't look at the nice armor art.
Maybe just make them damaged, so that you can spend less resources repairing them. This may already be in the game, but I can't tell, since I have the missing merchant bug like everybody else, and I've never seen any damaged armor in my inventory. They're just gone after a failed expedition.