Less and More Sunlight Regions
The distance to the sun could be simulated by having regions of space with a property increasing or decreasing the efficiency of solar panels as well as a property affecting the skybox.
A region "close to the sun" has a skybox with a bigger and redder sun and a positiv effect on solarpanels. A region "far away from the sun" has a skybox with a smaller and bluer sun.
Those regions could be arranged arouns or by default anchored to planets. For example Mars gets a "further away" region and earthlike a "closer" region with respective 400 km^3 and a cubical shape.
The benefit to gameplay lies in having to adapt to your region. Just like in reality you need an internal powersource like a reactor to operate in outer space.
You could also add the optional game setting of decreasing solarpanel efficiency and changing skybox with increasing distance to the center of the map to make planets more attractive for being quite close to the center.
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