I am going to repost part of my thoughts, for what it’s worth, from the review thread.

The Starkiller base should have been a fake, with the real weapon of the First Order being a mind, a military genius. I would rather have seen something along the lines of Germany invading France in World War II where the French were still looking at warfare from a First World War perspective and invested heavily in stationary defenses at the Maginot Line. The New Republic could have same mindset seeing the First Order as the same as the Empire, building their own superweapon or similar defensive strategy only to be turned on them to destroy the new capital. They would lead the Resistance away to attack the Starkiller base, which would be a ruse only to lead to a sneak attack by the First Order on the new capital. That general idea anyway.