And solar power generators would only be viable if they were substantially stronger then standard ones in some way (perhaps if they had a much larger base generation, but did NOT scale with dimensions, making them suitable for small in-system ships but less so for large ones where dimension scaling causes standard generators to be better).
If you want realism nitpicking, which doesn\'t have much point really, then shields wouldn\'t really help against the sun very much since they appear to be translucent when not being disturbed. Which means that light can go right through them, making them useless for avoiding the heating effects (and lasers, really, which is something even the more realistic sci-fi settings that have shields tend to conveniently ignore).
Fortunately, completely realistic is boring relative to treating space like a 3D ocean like many settings do, and so there is no reason game-wise why there couldn\'t be some means of making solar radiation blockable via the shields.
On the note of shields though, some ideas of my own:
1. Directional shields (which unfortunately will require a significant re-work of some code to function so may not be too viable). Have 6 shield banks, which take hits based on which side of the ship is hit (preferably calculated either via which section of the ship is hit, i.e. front rear top quadrant or front bottom front quadrant, or by the angle of the incoming damage, rather then which side of the block a hit lands on, or else hits to the underside of a ship bridge on the \"top\" will cause \"bottom\" shields to decrease). Draining one shield bank allows shots to get through on that side, even if the other shield banks are still up.
Depending on how combat and weapon mechanics evolve as the game improves, this could result in a situation where large ships often rotate around to fire side-weapons or something at enemies, so as to change which shield is taking the most hits and give them more survivability against each other. A small ship of course would not be prone to this, as it would have maneuverability at a level that allows it to stay on one side of a large enough vessel even if its trying to turn away, and so the small ship would only need to worry about getting through a single shield bank, as opposed to larger ships which (against decent pilots) would need to get through 3 or 4 sides worth of shields (more counting the ones that regenerate while the opposite side is taking the brunt).
2. Rework regeneration some more. Perhaps nerf even it more, but allow it to continue in combat. While also adding a feature that regenerates 10% shields per second if the ship has not been hit by anything in the last 30 or 60 seconds. So as to allow large ships to get their shields up within a reasonable time frame before they need worry about getting into fights.
If directional shields were implimented, then the current regeneration system is actually not bad, since rotating the ship around like some Star Trek games would allow the lower shields to get a chance to not be hit by facing them away from incoming shots.
Of course, before worrying about shields and combat too much, addressing manueverability in some fashion is needed. As it stands, large ships turn too slow and accelerate too fast. And small cap ships or large \"fighters\" and gunships turn MUCH too slow. The turning issue can be partly solved by adjusting the size scaling until a more proper system is done (i.e. ship turn rates decrease at a slower rate as size increases; large ships will still be slow turning but anything larger then a 30ish meter gunship will no longer be just as bad).
On that note, I honestly think it wouldn\'t be bad to add a bit of unrealism in this regard. Since space in this game already has \"drag,\" may as well make it more like the sorts of drag you see in oceangoing ships. That is, their primary directions are forwards and backwards, and they tend to have substantially less acceleration and speed going sideways (and up/down since this is a space game). If people want to have classical feels to their space capital ships, they shouldn\'t be strafing side to side like angry hornets.
