When is a Store's Inventory Determined?

When is the inventory of a Store set?

• at the beginning of the sector
• right before the store is visited
• some other time

Will visiting the same store multiple times offer different buy options or more fuel/missles/drones?

Inventory is determined when you first arrive at the store node

The store inventory is generated when you jump to the store node on the map. Revisiting a store node that you've already visited will not change the inventory of that store.

I tested this by doing the following

• Start the game
• Proceed until you see a "store" node
• Save and exit
• Go to My Documents\My Games\fasterthanlight and make a copy of continue.sav
• Start the game
• Visit the store
• Exit the game
• Restore continue.sav
• Start the game
• Visit the store

On the first visit I got a store containing the following;

On the second visit I got a store containing the following;

Since these two inventories are different, and my save was from before visiting the node, the store must be generated as you visit the node.

It can be implied that the store's inventory is set a the beginning of the sector since that is when the game generates all the nodes for that sector. Although it can be when you are entering a store node, it's hard to say for sure.

Edit: See kalina's answer

Visiting the same store multiple times will not yield different items.