Yep, you know what, I will make the default weapon always be Pistol. It definitely feels the best before any research.
Actually kinda liking the "first one's free" idea, genuinely never thought of that... I think that would address a number of people's gripes without affecting the game's balance overall too much.
Stats before->after I would LOVE... and would also be very difficult for me to implement, believe it or not. It's hard to explain it properly/succintly, but the way stats are displayed is handled differently for each weapon - couldn't just simply get a before and after value for each stat for every weapon. I'd say this is on the "maybe someday" list.
Hovering over item and lighting slots up... is a REALLY good idea. Guaranteed I'll implement this (not sure when, but I'd like to have this in the next or next-next update)!
Selling/deleting items, admittedly, will (at the very most) be a feature in a future additional mode, but for the modes that exist, I intentionally want player item decisions to be permanent.
"Shop item locking" (freezing as you call it) has been suggested by a couple others and is on my todo list!
Hey Ben - download the updated zip for v1.0.8, which contains these updatesas well as an important change that I hope will help newbies understand things better: the shop icon for each weapon will instead be the DNA letter.
Keep at it - think of the time before your first win as just the tutorial. Once you've got lots of Research and you start to really get the hang of things, it'll feel like a breeze (for example: you'll almost always be able to afford something after wave 1 after maxing out the Biomass-related researches).
Once you get further, you'll realize that "depths" are ascensions, too.
