Hah, right, it's going to be hilarious when the first Researcher to build a Solar Core Tap tries to collapse his home system and ends up wiping out all his stuff.

The fighter idea sounds sadly plausible. We really do need some clarity on this, because if it does mean you need to build the tap in-system, this completely changes how a Researcher would play the early game (of course, pushing them to expand, expand, expand). In the game I'm playing as a Researcher, I'm fairly close to Graviton Physics, but have nowhere near 12 colonies, nor do I think I could come up with the difference I need at this stage of the game.