Heckur

There's a small button at the bottom this forum's topic screen called 'Search Forum'. Use it.

PCGameMods.com <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks Frosty! Downloading right now (w00t)

Oh man, can't wait to try this out. Why o why must the LucasForums site be down just now Is there an alternative download site?

I think you need some lessons from Eddo36. He really is much better at it <_<

Probably not. I read somewhere that you need at least 15 points (on scale of 100) more influence with Visas than Handmaiden. Use the Kotor savegame editor to check your influence (and alter it if you don't want to replay).

You beat me w666tvr!

There are two kind of quests in Nar Shaddaa: quests in favor of the Exchange and quests against the Exchange. After doing a certain number of quests against or in favor of the Exchange, the game progresses to the next stage by sending you an invitation to come to the Jekk'Jekk Tar bar. Sometimes people manage to do the quests in such an order that the game doesn't know if you want to help the Exchange or fight against it. And when all quests are done, you have no way to let the game know what your point of view is. There is one safety measure in the game: contact the litle rat man (don't know his/her name) and say you want to speak to the Exchange. This will cost you 2000 credits. You find him/her just behind the door to the cantina, at the right. After making the appointment, run around for a while, visiting all the areas till you get the invitation. If this doesn't help, I know no other way then to restore a saved game and play Nar Shaddaa again. This time use some common sense in what quests you will do. Since you are dark sided, you probably want to help the Exchange. Quest in favor of the Exchange are: - 'Removing' the Sirocco gang - 'Removing' the Rodian merchant (Geeda?) - Destroying the droid of the swoop track owner - Persuading Loota to work for the Exchange - Killing the sick main in the refugee sector after talking to Sarquesh about him - Looting Vogga's vault (not sure about that one) There are probably more options, but I don't know anymore.

Well that isn't really bad AI, just bad planning. As the player you are able to see what is coming and prepare for it, hencing buffing before a battle. Often the enemy doesn't know you are coming from a plot point of view and more especially from an AI point of view, so it doesn't prepare. One solution would be to have an 'alarm' like system where enemies on the level know you are there so turn on shields, apply buffs etc when an alarm near them goes off. This would give them a chance to react before you get to them and would also provide a nice tactical option of 'ghosting' enemies to avoid an alarm going off. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> True, although I think this alarm system should be part of the AI. On Telos you can walk past mercenary parties as if you were invisible. You can blow up mines in their faces and they don't react. Just plain stupid. Yes, the game is poorly balanced. It isn't hard to imagine I've played such games! :D. But the cause isn't just the bad AI, its the whole design of the battles. Damage is the key thing really. If I can do enough damage to kill something in one hit, then the only tactic that would make sense would be the 'great unholy massarce' approach. The enemy must do about the same damage to you as you can to it. That way you end up with a kind of 50/50 win lose result if you just leave it to the AI. Its then up to the player to do something 'tactical' to shift the odds in their favour, be it use of special items, knowing specific weaknesses of the enemy (not the AI itself), use of terrain etc. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I agree. In this game the emphasis is on doing as much damage as possible, while in all the star wars stories the emphasis is on not getting hurt. All those mighty knights and other heroes all go down after taking one severe injury. If the damage is scaled down, the battles become more interresting. Fortunately the game allows you to do this. The more interesting character builds are the high defense / low damage ones, in my opinion.

The original concept of real time fights in a turn based system was good: you control a (large) party, you choose a tactic, you issue commands for each member and then watch the fight in real time. Because you needed to control more than one character, you had the ability to pause the fight, give more commands, and resume it. However, in both Kotors, this concept is severely flawed: the command queues for the party members don't work. So it no longer makes sense to give commands to party members, because they will be ignored as soon as you switch to another member. The only way to influence the actions of a party member is choosing the 'AI' script for this member or actively taking control of him/her. Because of this command queue bug, it no longer makes sense to pause the game, if you are an experienced gamer. But if you're new in this game, you're easily overwhelmed by the rich choice of fighting styles, powers and targets. Pausing the game gives you time to think. This game isn't some real time FPS, with only eight weapons and two attack modes. It offers much more and if you want to use all that, instead of Master Speed / Master Flurry all the time, then you need time to think.

Think reverse: you encounter many battles with opponents that are physically stronger than you are, have better equipment, are higher level, et cetera. Yet you torn them to pieces. Now why would that happen? Why don't they torn you to pieces. Only two words: bad AI. Why is it so hard to imagine that they can defend themselves too? That a battle can take longer than two rounds, because they know how to fight too? That you no longer throw yourself into the enemy to rip them apart because you know that if you do so, you will instantly die? And suddenly you need a consular to protect yourself, you need someone to break through the enemy's defenses. Suddenly you need tactics. And that makes battles so much more interesting. Currently, most fights in K2 are just d20 based hack & slash parties and the only time you're in trouble is when you're heavily out-gunned or when your party members do something stupid.

Well, you can always stun them and run away... And take control over another party member to make him run away too... And take control over another party member to make him run away too... And take control over another party member to make him run away too... And take control over another party member to make him run away too... And take control over another party member to make him run away too...

Even in K2's closed quarters there're so many options to make a better AI: - use a melee shield when under melee attack - use an energy shield when under blaster fire - buff - let the ranged fighters fall back when under melee attack - help each other - all against one And think of all the options you have when using the force. Buff first and attack later? Strike first to get a helpless enemy and leaving yourself unprotected if this fails? But no, all Kreia does is fight first and buff when everyone is dead, depleting all her force points. Even the end-bosses don't know how to use their powers. Of all games I've played there was only one with a decent AI: Unreal. There you encountered one enemy at the time and it was enough. Not because they were overpowered, but because they were smart. They dodged your fire, hid when necessary, retreited when wounded. All I read the last 5 to 10 years is comments like: "In this game we have realy given attention to AI", "Now they are realy smart." It seems that the number of comments like is directly subtracted from the number days, hours perhaps, that is spent on the AI. "Boss, we still need to develop that promised AI!" "OK Marl, you have 4 hours to write that script"

The improvement will still happen since your only removing part of the equation. Your still going to level up and get more hp's , your still going to get better weapons and armour, your stats are still going to be modifying how much damage you can dish out and take. The major difference being instead of just pointing and clicking your now actually in direct control. But like in any RPG a good character is still going to make up for the weakness of the player and it's going to take a very skilled player to overcome the handicaps of an underleveled character. It's not like there isnt already a great deal of player skill involved in the KOTORs anyway. In an FPS you dont have any such modifiers. I could teleport master chief to the end boss and depending on how good I was have no trouble taking him out. Thats not going to happen here since the core of the system is still intact. Your still not going to be able to run around with a level 1 character and kill a level 20 endboss anymore than you can now. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah, now I understand you. I think what you're proposing would be an improvement. It would give more involvement in the game: lean back and you lose the battle, but actively fight back and you might win. Yes. Powers come with experience, but nothing else.

No , thats not what I mean. I mean do away with the "to hit" part altogether and have combat worked like it would in a game like Tekken. If you hit you hit, if you miss you miss. The stats would still modify the effects but there would be no more to hit roll as part of combat. BAB therefore likewise becomes totally obsolete and AC takes on the function of absorbing and reducing the damage rather than outright eliminating it, which is what your dodge and block functions are for. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> So what you mean is replace the d20 to-hit with the skill of the player behind the PC/console, like in a FPS? That's not role playing anymore: the skill of the player is more or less constant (perhaps slightly improving after many hours of playing). The exile however, is gaining experience while progressing through the game. Take a look at Jedi Outcast or similar games.

Actually, this is already happening _if_ you are hi-level, although not enough in my opinion. There are some invisible feats in the game that are assigned to you at certain levels. They take care for the better combat moves. Slight spoiler:

The d20 system is not the problem here, it's the AI.

If you removed the d20 what would you really be losing? Not the system now, but rather the d20 roll to hit (saving throws remain totally unafected by this). Techinally you dont even need to lose the d20, but I really hate systems where you get two chances to fail, one because you misstimed your attack or even if it connects the other because then you still have to roll the dice. Even if you remove the "to hit" then you still have str and dex modifying damage and AC respectively so they dont exactly become useless stats by any means. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But the whole environment is d20 based: your ability to detect mines, whether poison affects you or not, picking locks. All this was designed with 'reality' in mind. Removing saving throws means that poison always works, that critical hits always stun. It would be like a real-life boxing match, where an upper-cut always results in a KO. Losing the d20 roll to hit, like you're proposing, means that only the base attack bonus is compared to the armor class of the oponent. So all strokes hit if your BAB is higher then his AC, or all miss if it is lower. Not very fun.

Yes, Force Sight works for me too. Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my previous posting. What I mean is: what does Visas do to your eyesight the moment before she attacks you. Because according to the dialog with Kreia, something happened that moment.

The turn-based system is a nice integration of the d20 roll system and real-time combat. If only those command queues did work It could be so simple: if commands pending in the queue, execute them first. If queue is empty: kick in the AI

Light side mastery gives +3 WIS for consular and +3 WIS for Jedi Master. Reaching dark side mastery gives + 3 WIS for consular and +50 bonus FP for Sith Lord. So you get the 50 FP only once, after updating to Sith Lord. Your first increase in force points came from the +3 WIS bonus. Is this what you mean?

Thanks! Time to update my graphics driver I think "

After Visas attacks you on the Ebon Hawk, you can talk to Kreia and say that Visas did something to your eyesight. What does she do? Am I missing something because of an obsolete graphics card/driver? All I see is the screen going black for two tenths of a second, which always occurs between two different scenes. Is there more to see?

The big advantage of FW is that all affected enemies don't melee attack you for three rounds: 1st round they're thrown away, 2nd round they're stunned, 3rd round they're running to you. When using FS, you may take a lot of damage if your defense is low. FW is the way to go when attacking the three lightsabers of Kreia!

After finishing all quests on the planet after Telos (doesn't matter wich one you choose), you will have your lightsaber.

If you're playing a LSM character with high influence on Handmaiden and less influence on Visas, and you've completed the game at least three times, then Handmaiden tells you that Atris was indeed in love with you before you went off to fight in the Mandalorian War. You have the option to confirm that, or tell Handmaiden that "if I knew it, perhaps it could have become something". IIRC it was one of the dialog options in the cargo hold of the Ebon Hawk: "Tell me about Atris". <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What?Are you sure about this information? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, it happened to me only a couple of days ago. I don't smoke, don't drink too much, so yeah, I'm pretty sure about it. To be more precise: I'm certain it was a dialog with Handmaiden in the cargohold. I just sparred with her once, I already had Visas, but didn't talk to her yet, but got some influence because I told Atton to warn me when she was healed: I wanted to questioning her. I'm not certain what dialog option it was exactly, when talking to Handmaiden.