Currently at armor dealers, they'll sometimes offer to upgrade your shield. Sweet. Nice.
.....but despite having stuff like the P25, S100 and S500 IN STOCK, they'll only EVER give you a monopole deflector.
Now, I personally feel that a protection systems DEALER who sells a bunch of other stuff, would have a range of things. So here's an idea. Not that well crafted, I only had it 5 minutes ago.
A check is run to determine what shield the player has.
At basic level (shields at, let's say, L1-2), the dealer will offer you a base-model Cyclotron/Monopole/something like that. Done instantly.
At second level, 3-4, the dealer offers a P25, S100, that sort of thing.
And so on. Of course, there would need to be a cap...and I'd suggest about Level 5. That would just mean 2 tiers with the above system, but 3 is possible as well.
If the player's shield is at or above L5, we offer the top shield, but say "But you're better off with what you've got, really.", still giving them the option to buy, but a really serious hint it's not a good idea.
That gives a nice shield, at a cost. If you want to make it more tricky, make them have to order-in the higher-level shield if it's not in inventory, with a mark-up for shipping and the like. That means that while the "randomness" of the players ability to acquire equipment is reduced, the cost of consistancy is increased credit cost....and the chance that the freighter is shot down. If necessary, that chance can be jacked up and have the player have to escort the ship in.
The same can be done to weapons dealers. Replacing the current mechanism with a similar "tiered" system, giving semi-random (multiple choices per "tier, but those choices are fixed per dealer, and from a small range) "weapons up to about the level of the omni-particle and Mk.1 Howitzer (and no higher) when at top tier.
This is just a rough idea, but I think it's got some potential.
