Comment 3 for bug 1206420

I get your point and agree with you. The Tiled Clone tool can achieve what you're asking for but involves a little more (useless ?) thinking. Nevertheless, your 9 angle star plan can be achieved really easily already, by setting the center outside the object, then going to the tiled clone tool and choosing 1 line, 9 columns, setting all translations to zero and under the 'Rotation' tab, choosing 40°.
The exact shift value in your first exemple has to be calculated as a percentage of the original object's size, which, even if not undoable, involves using a calculator which should be avoided.
So I guess the tool could already be made better whith a choice of relative vs absolute values and a choice of units.
Regards