I'm thinking here a new way of doing Orbital Support for ground assaults.
While we at the moment can drop nukes and whatnot on enemy ground forces, this is a bit of a hit and miss - and more often than not causes some kind of unwanted damage to the existing structures or the environment.
But what about an option to designate a ship with beam weapons, or the individual weapons within a ship, as orbital support for ground troops. When engaged in battle, a beam weapon in orbit, capable of doing damage to the planet surface, would add a modifier to a brigade/division combat ability.
Perhaps limit this so that any beam weapon that would cause more than 1-2 points of damage could also cause environmental/collateral damage, but within this small limit there would be no chance of causing unintended damage from that weapon. A 'safe' method of providing limited support to ground units. Connect this ability to either the brigade of division HQ unit (non-HQ units lack the equipment/skill to accurately call pin-point orbital support fire by themselves), and apply a small bonus to all units that HQ commands. While engaged in Orbital Support mode, the ship would be unable to leave orbit before ground operations are complete, or if it did the ground forces supported suffer a morale penalty for a limited amount of time - perhaps until next combat roll? ("Where's our damned fire support?!" "Scanning asteroids on the other side of the system!" "Well f%, they're leaving us here to die?").