I don't like how colony merchants have such random inventories. Everyone seems to be a pawn-broker - a little of this, a little of that, but nothing really interesting. I think that a good way to fix that would be for shops to sell items according to the shop furniture. This could be calculated in a couple of different ways: 1) Specify race with furniture: merchant sells a mix of items but all geared towards a specific race 2) Specify item type with furniture: merchant will sell only weapons, or only armor, or only food, or only gear, etc. 3) Specify both race and item type. 4) Specify neither race nor type: have a shop with current mechanics (completely random). It would take some new items to be created to pull this off and separate it from the mechanics that determine guards and merchant species. Maybe all we need for this would be some wall posters, so that players can guess what a merchant has before talking with it. It would also be nice if colony merchant inventories changed periodically, like the Frogg merchant. They have a base inventory that is always the same, and other items that change every few hours.
