Developing the Sun
Continued…
• 
This is Earth vs. This is the Sun. 
This is YOU standing on your starship before the Sun in deep space. 
Can you not see yourself? — (Exactly. That is the magnitude of what we’re creating.)
If our ‘star system playing area’ or “skybox” has been limited and ‘planet orbital physics’ removed due to…
Complications…
And…
Then…
Building the Sun
Building the sun was never the issue, as it would be like building any other planet. Building the sun would be essential if desiring to provide gameplay around the experience of up-close encounters with the sun.
How can you have an interesting, meaningful and impactful up-close encounter with a bright ball of light that simply gets bigger and brighter as you get closer, but offers no other visual changes or change to gameplay?
I think a large part of what excites someone around the thought of having an up-close encounter with the sun, is most particularly to experience the intense visuals and to do so at a great risk of danger, even death.
Science Fiction…
Should all suns be hot and fiery suns? 
What about cold and frozen suns? 
Or toxic and poisonous suns? 
Or the electromagnetic and particulate of radiation suns? 
Maybe suns in NMS present hazard types based on the types of suns they are. Should some suns present dual hazards and even anomalous hazards?
This adds a whole new depth, danger and dynamic to star system types.
Reaching the Sun
If unable to reach the sun in the most literal sense of flying there, then we go with the next best option. We go with what’s proven to work, what’s already in the game, how we hyperdrive lightyear travel between star systems. Except this time we only travel within a star system, or rather provide the illusion of doing so.
We travel to the Sun via a ‘Warp Tunnel.’
Of course, this is normally not very realistic. However, there are a few things that we might could try that could make this appear so unbelievably realistic that you’d never realize that you’re going nowhere fast.
When entering a warp tunnel…
Could everything in the skybox disappear except the sky itself?
- Specifically, could the space station, planets, asteroids, other players, markers, etc. disappear?
Could the warp tunnel be transparent so that we can see the star system though it?
Could the sun’s orbital rotation stop and the sun(s) be positioned directly in front of our starship?
This would allow us to feel like we’re still traveling within the same star system most naturally. It would feel as though we were travelling so fast and going so far that we left the space station and planets behind.
The rest of the illusion of traveling fast (although actually sitting in one place) could be achieved with the same streams of light and stardust we see whizzing past us when flying our starship’s pulse jet engines.
Maybe in order to play up the illusion of travelling faster than our starship’s pulse jet engines, we could experience extra streams of light and stardust whizzing past, further out than usual, even flames in front.
This would also allow us to stop flight at any given moment, where the asteroids could then return for refueling and the sun could then resume its orbital rotation, exit the warp tunnel, fly our starship around, shoot asteroids, refuel, etc., and then reenter the warp tunnel, where the asteroids then disappear and the sun then stops its orbital rotation and recenters in front of our starship…
Off we gooooooo…
Some things that could occur when we stop flight and exist the warp tunnel to begin mining asteroids is powerful deep space storms could surface and even quick and nimble (but not “too overpowering to the player,” within reason,) deep space megafaunas, where we have to survive the storms and megafaunas. 
‘Space Kraken’ emerges from solar storm
Optional Details and Other Specifics
I’m trying to achieve the old feature requests of long-distance flight, flying to the sun, more purpose for frigates, ability to go on at least some frigate expeditions, deep space storms, deep space megafaunas, and surprisingly even distant planets (or hidden planets) of multi-biome planets and perhaps even geometric planets. I’ll talk more about the concept of distant planets (or hidden planets) later. 
Off to the sun…
Although we could fly to the sun with our regular or smaller sized starships, I’d like to achieve greater purpose for our frigate starships (our middle or in-between sized starships) than them just sitting there, trailing behind our freighters, and being sent out on expeditions that we ourselves can’t even embark on.
By using frigates for the purpose of long-distance flight, we also achieve that other feature request of bigger starships with walk-in interiors, as our frigates are quite large in NMS, yet smaller than freighters, and long-distance flight gives us a reason for walk-in interiors with various internal cabins serving various purposes as maintained by ourselves and our various alien NPC cabinmates. We can also then play up cabin life RPG.
I mean, I guess we could also provide players with the option of a 1 month non-stop flight to the sun via starship, for those that want that kind of experience, but good mercy. So we give them 30 mins by frigate. It would be 1 hour to the sun, but we’d never make it that far, death by insanity at 31 min, and death by extreme heat and extreme radiation any closer or even at any moment our shields get too low. Our shields getting lower faster the closer we get to the sun and depleting very fast upon arrival. Upon arrival, part of the gameplay is that we must slow down to a stop between 30 min and 31 min, and as close to 31 min as we have the “med kits” 
and “resources” 
to handle by maintaining our health 
and our starship’s shields. 
This is intended to be an extreme experience, so we have to play up all the risks and all the dangers. Which means that we have to play up all the rewards and the benefits outweighing all the risks and all the dangers. So we had better got a good reason for obtaining various types of Cosmic Energy and high value data packets of useful information to those interested and perhaps for our own particular uses.
(I’ve already discussed Cosmic Energy in a prior post above, but I do encourage expanding upon that concept more with other concepts, and I will discuss the concept of data packets a bit further below.)
Having set our coordinates in the direction of the sun, the entire experience is autopilot and only interrupted by possible events along the expedition. (We will need to expand upon what those events could be. It could just be occasional deep space storms and deep space megafauna when we stop to mine asteroids and refuel. But other events are possible, too.) Ahead, we see the sun coming closer into view. But this too is an illusion, as the ball of white light is merely growing in size. It appears as if coming closer into view. But we will only make it halfway to the sun, for fear that we will die, as we can’t get too close to the sun. But the sun will appear tremendously huge in the sky, even at such great distance because it is so much larger than anything ever imaginable. Because its shear magnitude will appear so very large, as large as the entire “skybox” of the entire star system itself, (with the sun no doubt being located just outside the “skybox”), it is possible that the sun could slowly fade from a bright white into a burning red, orange and yellow display of the raging flames of fires of nuclear fusion reactions and superabundant hot plasma that is the burning sun. Or, it could be that we have to wear special solar helmets, or visors, or goggles, etc. in order to not see more than a complete whiteout. And/or, perhaps we have to wear such a solar exosuit and helmet in order to even stand before the sun. Perhaps some suns emit extreme solar winds, that could very well blow us right off the frigate deck, while other suns could very well suck us right off the deck, where we would then trail off into our solar doom…
So we have to be extra careful in the presence of the sun, this is intended to be an extreme experience.
I think even this experience alone will provide enough incentive to reach the sun for most players, but we could reward this experience in all various ways, and doing so could maintain a long-term desire to keep returning to the sun. One option being to harvest something from the sun, something useful that can’t be obtained through any other means, or not in such quantity, such as something like Cosmic Energy, and perhaps there are different types, unique per star system, based on their specific star types, and/or etc. But once there, it will be important not to linger long, due to the sun’s effect on our health and our starship shields draining faster and faster upon our approach to the sun, and especially once we have made it there and are as close as possible, standing before the sun. Caution: Solar flares, solar storms, and much more.
Get any closer or linger too much longer, and death will follow quickly.
Now… put all this in VR and play it in Permadeath mode.
“Nobody can hear you scream in space!”
“It was then that a ‘solar storm’ occurred while I was standing before the sun. Half the crew died -//kzt//-”
Viewing the Sun
So I came up with this idea for how we could safely view it from a distance. Sometimes perhaps we’d just like to know we can safely see it up close without actually going to it and risking our lives over the matter, maybe gather some useful data that could benefit us on our travels. Other times, we may want that epic experience. I mean, imagine experiencing that in VR. But not always do we want to reach the sun…
Benefits & Rewards
Perhaps we could gather data packets in the form of items that could have some use and/or value, less use and/or value if gathered via telescope, more use and/or value if gathered through an up-close encounter.
Perhaps we could obtain and install an optional technology upgrade to our exosuit analysis visor binoculars, that darkens our view (much like a welder’s helmet does) and allows us to see the sun as the red, orange and yellow flames of hot plasma that it is, and in a greater depth and quality than simply a white ball of light, and from any planetary location, but we would see it as a small or only somewhat magnified orb, and not in as good of quality as when compared against the results of a high powered telescope, or especially the experience of an in person up-close encounter. So it would be fitting then that our binoculars would gather the least amount of data, and thus data packets with the least amount of use and/or value.
What other information and/or item(s) could we gather from up-close encounters with the sun, or from viewing it from long-distances? What use and/or value, rewards and/or benefits, could these provide?
Should the sun benefit us by boosting our health or some technology or stats in some way? Should we add humor? Hold a stake before the sun and it cooks it for you? Offer it before the sun, dropping it into its solar winds, it belches loudly and gives back extra Cosmic Energy? “Only in NMS do suns pass wind.”
Bonus…
Reaching Distant Planets
Some of our present planets could be hidden to serve as distant planets.
Alternatively, it is my understanding that star systems already have hidden planets, that not all planets are even used in-game. I understand that this is how they added new planet types during the Origins Update. If this is true, HG could turn these on at any moment.
These could serve as extra special planets, such as multi-biome planets. 
‘Multi-Biome Planets’ could serve as a reward for those willing to engage in long-distance flight.
However, it could also be that not all distant planets are multi-biome planets, but have a chance to occur. And/or there could also be other strange planets to be found out that far, such as non-spherical planets that take on all sorts of weird geometric shapes, (as I discussed in a prior post above), Geometric Planets.
So…
Using the same method as described above…
We travel to distant planets via a ‘Warp Tunnel.’
After a certain length of time, we exit the warp tunnel and find a distant planet in the system. All the other planets and the space station remain hidden, so as to play up your new location deep within the system.
Again, this could be another purpose for long-distance flight and another purpose for frigates in NMS.
Reference
You can learn more about the concept of hidden planets in NMS by expanding this Multiverse Concept thread and just reading the portion at the top about Origins 3.0 and how HG added new planet types…