store at the exit always?

[DarkenDragon]

I mentioned this in my other post but it seemed to be ignored cuz of the subject I had.

so yea I feel the store placements have been quite poor in most cases, and because of this its been hit or miss.

I feel that the stores should be in somewhere in the middle and at the very end.

having a store right at the beginning feels like your being robbed of a store cuz most of the times your gonna be too poor to make use of it and since its at the beginning, you wont have time to go back and buy stuff when you finally got some scrap to spend.

another problem I see is how some stores are side by side each other, you have to choose which one you want to go to and hope you go to the right store since theres so many different variations and most of the time its a store that sells stuff you dont want. or the other store has much better things, but you dont want to waste the time or the warps to be going back and forth.

with a predictable store at the very end you can plan accordingly, make sure your topped up for the next sector, and garentees you a chance to upgrade your ship each sector, cuz right now you can run into some really bad luck and dont even get many weapon upgrades and some of the ships require better weapons after sector 2 in order to do well, such as the engi cruiser which needs annother weapon the moment the enemies get lvl 2 shields since it'll take too long to lock them down.

as for the second shop, somewhere in the middle would be nice and it can be random in the middle, so that you might miss it and you might not. and you'll have to decide weither or not you want to make the detour to get to it.

[Durus]

My usual strategy when needing to shop is trying to jump to "middle" nodes. You can spot stores from a jump away most of the time and there's usually 2 stores per sector. So what I do is try to sit 1 jump from every star in the sector at some point. this way i'm very likely to run in to a store. Of course the question of them having stuff I want is entirely different.
Oh the other part to this strategy is to be 2-3 jumps ahead of the pursuit force so that you have time to shop and get to the exit.

[DarkenDragon]

the problem is Im finding them clump up in systems side by side, or at the very beginning of the sector where I have no scrap to begin with, its basically saying nope your not getting a chance to use this store at all. just doesnt seem fair or balanced.

need some kind of algorithm to make sure they are seperated and reliable in spots where we have a chance to get the scrap we need to buy things.

and we also need a reliable way to find the shop too.

maybe make shops visible 2 jumps away? like as if theres a giant sign that says "come buy stuff here!" even though most of the shops I run into are just ships who couldnt get away from me and is willing to sell what they have for a price

[Peo01]

Yeah, I think everyone knows that problem.

Yet I like it the way it is, because it makes you think more about your current situation.
Do I return to the shop, in order to find out what it has?
Or should I explore this distress signal, that might give me more ressources and hope that the stores I find
next time have what I need.

Shall I buy the crew transport, or the drone center?
Maybe I can gather enough ressources from other systems and return to buy both.
Will the rebels be here before I get back?

Simply said, it adds to the feeling of not being able to see everything in one run (which obviously is impossible).
That's also why I have long range sensors with me... ... whenever I find a shop that sells them or get them through sheer luck.

What I'd like to see is a 2nd campaign (who knows what patches might bring us) that is more open.
Maybe returning the favour and striking back at the rebels.
Fighting it out around the galaxy in order to gain control of the sectors.
Returning the federation to it's former glory!