I have to agree with your assessment of the current situation with stars. Currently we are sort of addressing the "dead zone" issue in another thread.

It appears there is popular support for doing something with the stars but without knowing the full development details of the game and the factions we are in effect grasping at straws trying to suggest thing. This is especially so for ideas that would have a significant effect on game play beyond neutral concepts like random solar events and fleet gate keeping.

In my opinion there should be something built in at a fundamental level that facilitates or even creates situations where inevitably major fleet engagements will occur around stars.

Doing stuff around the stars has been something we've talked about internally for a long time. Not sure where things stand right now with it, however.

Anti-matter harvesting around a star? For a Super Weapon? OMG!

Ehh just throwing this out, but wouldn't it be cool if each race had 1 SUPER WEAPON, but that it required so much anti-matter that you would have to have special harvesting ships to power the weapon?

Sort of like how the refineries work now. Only difference is the ships would travel to the sun, absorb the anti-matter and travel back to the storage facility.

Make a limit though so that the super weapon is very powerful but requires at least 40-50 minutes of game play to acquire enough antimatter to use it. And make it a one shot thing, that could perhaps eliminate the entire enemy at a given location.

It would make the end of the game go faster, plus give another reason to place ships at the stars for defense.

Ah well its just a thought...

in simple terms? or in pig latin?
simple terms: no
pig latin: o-nay

eh... I just think it would be a bit unbalanced.

maybe a corruption style, that if you feed antimatter into your enemies base it would mess with his various functionalities.

but seeing as only one person would be able to hold onto it at a time, factor in the already amazing ease of turtling and wammo, easy win.

As long as you can't build hangars, gauss cannons or other facilities at stars, turtling won't be as easy as you think. It will still come down to fleet versus fleet. Of course, alliances, economy and production capacity will also figure into this pretty heavily.

However, if you win that massive battle and actually control an opponents star...well, actually you will probably need to rebuild up what is left of your fleet. But then you will have the choice of which planet to attack. Just make sure it is the weakest one of the four.

Okay Schem, I'll agree that a stalemate could occur IF there are only 2 players in the game, each has a complete star system with identical resources AND each one has the same size and fleet composition (at the same level tech).

However, you could say the same thing about 2 players in a single star system where each has 2 of the 4 linking points built up into super fortresses. So, since you are arguing against stars becoming relevant in the game for fear of stalemates, why aren't you complaining about the other possible stalemate situations in the game?

How about an option for a supernova weapon in a "Last Flagship Standing" mode? Can call it a "Last Star Remaining" game:

Have your fleet defend some T6 military tech devices that need to stay in orbit around the enemy star for a certain amount of time... if successfully deployed into the star, it gives you a certain window of safety to jump to safety back into your own star system before annihilation.

This would give another use and options for multi-star system games, more flavour to choose from.

I'd love to see the solar fireworks when I wipe out 20 enemy planets in one fell swoop, after decimating their armadas! THAT would be an empire to fear. Star Wars can keep their feeble Death Star... gimme a supernova to play with!

  

Hmm perhaps maybe there could be something like the Ring from Ringworld (by Larry Niven) around the stars (though alot closer then the one in the book) that you could build and it would basically count as a few worlds. The reason why it would count as a few worlds was that in the larger Ring from the books (the diameter of the ring was the entire orbit of Earth basically) the total space on the ring was a the equivalent to a few million Earth's. And maybe if some super structure like the Ring was made, then the other planets (if they can see the star) will notice if you look at the star that there is some sort of object at it.

On the subject of the Empire and supernova weapons, while I am not the biggest SW fan I know (though I am semi good), for a while the Empire did have such a weapon. It was some sort of ship that they found (I think) that it's armour made it invincible and it could make star's go supernova (hence the reason for the armour). And since they couldnt destroy it the rebels chucked it into a gas giant. Later the Empire got it back out somehow, so the rebels took it again, and this time sent it into one of the black holes at Maw (I think). Correct me if I'm wrong on that stuff.

Would it be possible to use the stars for research?
It is a bit far fetched, but one could argue that the close proximity to the star with a complete research-station offers unique observation and experimentation opportunities that can increase the productivity of research.

I suggest this because it makes the stars a valueable resource since the player who controls it can easily gain a technological edge and it isn't a too special case.
However, one would have to spend some thoughts on how to "colonize" the star. If starbases are in the pipe then that would be an option. Otherwise it'd be difficult to explain what a colony frigate is doing with a giant blob of fusing gas.

you can take out all of those qualifications, and a stalemate would still be highly likely.

how? how does such an amazing chokepoint not warrant concern?

because there are OTHER ways around.

there really arent any other ones

and yet... completely untrue

I dont think anyone should be able to "own" the GW around a star.