JoeBlade

I've been looking a bit into influence information but found most of them to focus rather heavily on LS. Hence my question: does anyone have advice on creating an influential baddie? I've experimented somewhat with my DS consular, with rather limited success. No luck turning my companions into jedi (or rather sith) without taking severe LS penalties along the way. The step-up to jedi itself seems to be the biggest hurdle: nearly all conversations appear to be LS-based (net LS shift, gah). Is there any way around that bar cheating/editing? Or are the jedi NPC's essentially intended for LS only? On a related note: I've spotted a hint in the loading screens - yes, I actually read those sometimes - referring to charisma vs. influence. Something along the lines of "high charisma makes you more influential towards your companions". Can anyone confirm/deny whether this has any noticeable effect? Could this help me with my DS vs. influence predicament?

I've only recently gotten the game and I'm enjoying it massively so far, except that the AI's combat tactics quite bug me. From KotOR 1 I was used to filling the queue, letting combat run for a few rounds, rinse, repeat. This clearly doesn't work anymore as characters insist on ignoring my commands altogether. The real challenge of a fight seems to be preventing your group members from performing outright stupid actions more than anything else. Yes, I've tried cancelling combat then re-filling the queue (as I've seen recommended on these forums), to no avail. I've tried the stationary setting which only causes the chars to stand around and do nothing despite a full queue most of the time (unless they're the active char but only one can be active at a time, so...) All in all, rather frustrating. Hence my question: are there any means of disabling/bypassing the AI on group members altogether? Alternatively, are there any settings that work at least semi-decently?