Why not make the resources required for the sun shields only aquired through interacting with the (upcoming) space whales?
So what to do with the rare resource gained from downing one of the Leviathans?
Why not use it to create two new moduals (Sun Shield Computer and Sun shield modual)
How this works: Very rare items/resources can be harvested from stars using the Harvester scoop. However this is normally not possible due to the intense heat/radiation near the star.
The Sun Shield works like an effect (put on hotbar, drains power while active).
While activate, it DISABLES shield regen and changes the color of the shield bar on your hud.
The amount of 'Sun shields' you have is proportional to your normal shield capcity divided by the number of Sun Shield moduals connected to the computer (with a max ratio of 1:1) thus a ship with 100k shields in, say 5,000 shield capacitors and 5,000 sun shield moduals would get 100k of Sun Shields.
The Sunshields could also work as normal shields (its basically your normal shield, but without the regen but protects your ship from stars heat/radiation), however cannot regen while active (you have to disable the effect and recoup shields to regen them).
As a ship equipped with Sun shields nears a star, instaed of the players/ship taking damage, the damage is absorbed by the shields. Due to not regening while active, this means ships can only remain near a star for (x) minutes (dependent on the shielding and maybe number of blocks on a ship).
The amount of damage taken to the shields per tick could also be related to the ships size, as larger ships would have greater surface area and thus would have to absorb more radiation/heat.
Damage per tick to the shields would increase exponentialy as the ship gets closer to the star (thus there would be optimum distances for harvesting).
When (x) distance from the star, active harvester scoops could have the (x%) chance of picking up very rare/new resources per tick (very low chance though).
Example of Sun Harvesting from elite dangerous):
Thus harvesting from stars would require a lot of effort to achieve and would have the chance of netting either rare resources or other rare things. Due to the disabled regen while active, any ship could only remain near a star for so long before losing its shielding and taking damage like normal.