Planets affected by the sun?

I support the idea that the planet takes damage the closer it is from its star.. but this situation should happen only when the planet is in collision route to the sun..
For balance purpose all the planets should start at a safe distance from its star.

Solar energy linked to whether it is in light is interesting. Since higher orbitals will take less energy for deep space movement, perhaps asteroids further from the sun should be bad for solar energy expansion? If you want a good solar backup, then you have to move the asteroid closer to the sun, or build solar satellites in a near-solar orbit. An asteroid or moon could actually be a very good construction and launch point for orbital solar cells.

With orbital cells, and no need for line of sight transmission, solar cells could be put in polar orbits, so they always face the sun. Depending on how much control we have over orbits, it would allow us to have orbital solar cells avoid enemy held positions with other odd, non-equatorial orbits.

I'm all for controlled solar flares as a high end weapon, as well as turning certain gas giants into giant fusion bombs or small suns. Considering the game video shows orbital stuff being handled automatically, if solar flares got in the game, it looks like you would only have to chose where you want it to hit, and the game would take care of all the timing. I wouldn't want it any other way, since the game isn't about orbital mechanics, it just uses orbital mechanics.

I concur. I -the commander - am supposed to command a number of bases at the same time, not meddle with a single weapon for a half of my time.

So if we can get day/night cycles, does that mean there could also be tidally-locked planets in the game as well as those with spin? It'd add another layer of strategy, as the player controlling such a planet with vast areas of solar would have a nice energy income.

We still don't know for sure. Uber didn't say anything about it..
As a developer (8 years of expirience developing manufacturing control systems) I don't see any technical reason that make this feature too dificult to implement, but this could bring some seriously balance issues.
Would be a really cool feature indeed.

Well, we could pretend that the light doesn't diminish except for it being nighttime or the sun being destroyed. That would mean that placement wouldn't be critical with respect to distance from the sun and efficacy of solar power. Not realistic, but it would remove that variable from the balance.

At the same time, though, if the sun could be destroyed...then perhaps the destructive wave would move slowly. So with a gradient to the energy possible the folks in the outer rim may not have as much energy to work with but they'll also be the last to be impacted by a systems' sun going nova.

It'd be a bit of a race where the core planets can build faster, but they'll need to in order to protect the sun or prepare their planets to escape the destructive wave. That would seem like a macro-enough decision making process to be worth looking at.

(Edited to include planet being able to escape, which may be an option.)