[OWL] Mercenary Outposts Expanded

Overhauls the Mercenary Camp from Vanilla Outposts Expanded: Additional Outposts, turning it into a meaningful something, not just a place to gather silver with unimportant pawns.

Features

• Combat Training (XP): Mercenaries stationed at the camp now gain combat experience over time, making it a true off-site training ground. (They need to be prepared for contracts!)

• Enhanced Contract Outcomes: Successful raids grant experience in addition to standard rewards. (They learn from their mistakes and fights.)

• Immersive Combat Reports: Replaces generic result notifications with detailed after-action reports that explain what actually happened. (I want more stories and narrative!)

• Corpse Recovery: Fallen mercenaries can be returned to your colony via transport pod for burial or resurrection instead of being lost forever. (I want to have dead bodies for a normal goodbye.)

I made this mod because mercenary camps in Vanilla Outposts Expanded felt a bit too random and disconnected from the rest of the game. Sending pawns away didn’t really reflect their skills or equipment, and I wanted those choices to actually matter.

The biggest change is how contract risk and outcomes are calculated. The game now looks at what your mercenaries are wearing and wielding. A squad in full Marine armor with charge rifles will perform very differently from one sent out in tribalwear, especially on high-risk contracts. Preparing your away teams now feels like a strategic decision instead of a way to dump unnecessary pawns.

I also wanted to reflect basic military structure. If an outpost has at least five mercenaries, one of them is assigned as a Leader. This role isn’t cosmetic - a skilled leader actively trains their squad, meaning idle mercenaries gain experience over time based on their commander’s abilities. They also gain proper combat experience from the contracts they fight.

To give some narrative weight to all of this, I rewrote the notifications to provide proper story resolutions after each battle. And for those of us who get attached to our pawns, there’s a new feature to have fallen mercenaries returned to your colony for a proper burial instead of disappearing off-screen.

📜Update 1.1: Narrative & Balance

New Narrative Styles: You can now change the "flavor" of combat reports in Mod Settings to match your tech level. This changes the text, not the difficulty.

• Standard: Security logs, gunfights, and explosive breaches.
• Medieval: Battle scrolls, war horns, castle sieges, and arrow volleys.
• Neolithic: Smoke signals, war drums, spirits, and hunting parties.

Custom Difficulty: The internal math is now fully exposed in settings. You can tweak:

• Combat Balance: Adjust Armor Effectiveness and Suppression Multipliers.
• Survival Chances: Change how likely a helmet is to save a pawn from a fatal hit.
• Progression: Customize XP gain rates and Leader bonuses.

Prisoners & Slaves: Restoredthe ability to use Prisoners and Slaves in your squads.

• Toggleable: Enable or disable them in settings.
• Effectiveness: Set exactly how much power they contribute compared to a regular soldier (e.g. 50%).

If you encounter any errors or odd behaviors with the new settings, please let me know in the Bug Report discussion thread and I will fix it as soon as possible!