Arrgh! Party AI & party combat tactical management was terrible in KotOR!
Example:
Mission & Carth are in my party. We encounter a group of foes & mines impede our path. The game goes into auto-pause. I select Mission to disable the mine. I stack Carth's queue with Power Blasts intending for him to stay back. My PC decides to melee. But this is KotOR after all, meaning nothing goes to plan. Carth decides to run through the 'deadly plasma mine' while Mission is disabling it, thus knocking her out, and then proceeds to start blasting right in the faces of the enemy cluster. Naturally, due to the +10 melee on range penalty he suffers to *each* enemy, he too gets knocked unconscious, hence leaving my PC to clean up the mess. <_<