a mid to endgame option i suggest, a ground generator that fires a large beam into space to hit a series of satelights to strike at your enemies forces with sweeping blows. the structure would be hardened but the satelights would also be there own units requiring launching into space and capable of being distroyed. so ifd you think your going to be attacked you can take out the satelight instead of havingto hammer at the base. alternitively it could be a bolt that passes from sat to sat instead of a beam.
I cant really say in which novel it was, but I once read about an fictional device which was able to transfer a suns plasma. Huge arrays would direct it through a solar system to either vaporise anything close or to power massive fort like shields of ships or stations. Maybe an idea to power stuff that is not supposed to be powered easily. I somehow like it when arrays build up out of structures. Like the energy beams in perimeter or just the interlinked AA rocket batteries. If the suggested beam defense/attack net would be implemented it would defenetly need a beam traveling way below lightspeed and the sats would need to aling themself one after the other before each shot just to give it that epic touch. Sound would be aswell needed for each mirrow hit and the beam traveling XD
Live Free or Die by John Ringo. You are thinking of the SAPL array. That series is a pretty large influence on the game. If you read it you'll see why.
I'm partial to David Weber and Steve White's Stars at War series, thought some of David webers recent books have been very meh. Mike
Somewhat related, Niven's earlier Ringworld series also used a star to power a superweapon. (I forget whether any of the stuff ahead is a spoiler; proceed at your own risk.) Controlled solar flares (a billion tons or so of plasma) were used as a gas laser medium to fire titanic x-ray laser pulses anywhere in the star system as a defense. Even without activating the laser mechanism, the controlled flare alone could also be tremedously destructive. Though there's less emphasis on space battles, David Drake's Lt. Leary series is fun as well.
This is one of the most frustrating series I ever read. For but a few details, it could have been my favourite SF series. This poor Honor is one of the worst case of Canon Sue I ever read, but for those who don't know what this means, chances are that this won't bother you. Writing a SF story based on actual historical events is fine, but be sure that the characters are at least remotely like the historical counterparts they are named after. Or just call them something else, because original characters are more interesting anyway. (And Haven is, interestingly, closer to a dystopian future France gone mad than the Revolutionary France. Which is, for a SF story, also more interesting.) Though if you never heard of, say, Louis Antoine de Saint Just, this won't bother you either. And if you are one of those who wonder why the Stormtroopers don't use automatic blasters, don't even try. This is a universe where it takes hundreds of years for someone to think about multi-stage missiles or even missile pods... But the sad part, IMHO, is that Weber just picked the wrong side to tell the story. Haven story, where the characters are trying to overcome impossible odds, between a superior, implacable enemy and their own insane government which is still the only thing (barely) preventing a WMD-powered total collapse, is simply more interesting. (And Honor would have made for a great anti-villain with a little less spotlight.) But I digress... A large orbital layer around a star would fit well into the game IMO, and it could obviously have special proprieties due to being that close to the star. Super solar generators are an obvious example, but star-powered plasma death rays sounds great fun. (I'll have to give Ringo's books a shot) If those have interplanetary ranges, then the star wouldn't be that different from a metal planet with repairable death rays, as in both case it's a unique place in the system and it needs a significant investment to be activated. Furthermore, the star can't move (even if star engines are probably not that harder than planetary engines, the star would move its system with it anyway).
Alastair Reynolds plays with some broadly similar ideas in his Revelation Space series. Though his star-powered super weapon is somewhat more destructive to the star in question. If you want to go more hard SF - check out Stellar engines More on topic, I'm not sold on weapons/systems on that scale for PA - wiping out or moving entire solar systems makes a hell of a lot more sense when you have more than one to play with in the game.
Are you, perhaps, not familar with the classic Horatio Hornblower novels which served as one of the inspiration for the series?
I am aware of their existence, though I didn't read it. But I give enough credit to Weber as a writer to not simply copy an older work and put it IN SPAAACE!!! and instead create his own original take on the story. For example the parts about Haven itself which have little more than a superficial resemblance to any historical event and are probably original work (and generally the most interesting if under-narrated part of the books IMHO). So the Canon Sue has no excuse, because either it was in the old HH books and Weber should have changed it, or he put it in his own original character and he shouldn't have. The varied enhanced cybernetic bits or the telepathic clawing furball pet/sidekick, among other things, make me think of the latter, but feel free to correct me. And the true (future) villains are in fact the Treecats. Think about it, <spoilers> aliens that can read minds and emotions, communicate telepathically, create unbreakable bonds with seemingly random humans that curiously happen to often be high in varied power structures (like, say, every single king or queen since ever) and are now expanding to other planets. And no one really know much about them, apart from what they let appear. Never trust a cat anyway... Now that's a whole new scale. IIRC,they dismantle an entire gas giant to build their device, use it to somehow create a hole in the star to expose its core and use it as a giant flamethrower to burn the planet to a crisp. <(more) spoilers> They even talk about turning stars into interstellar-ranged flamethrowers, and the ability to destroy every single planet (and probably star) of the galaxy if they had wanted. But they try to be subtle and will only seriously damage a planet when they really want to take no chance. Fun read...
