E_Motion

Yeah - I got the two Sions also when I did this. The way it works is one of them is the normal Sion; you fight and talk him to death in the normal way. The other just stands there. Then when the first one is dead, you go over and hit the other one a couple times and he dies. Wierd but true. The thing does work.

Yup; it's strange allright. Kept thinking Mira would bump into the Exile. But never saw him. Guess he got blown up on Malachor V at game's end. And guess that took care of the hole in the Force once and for all. (w00t) (w00t) *************

Well I just mangaed to do the same thing. So it is true. Couldn't get to work same way as posted here. The way it worked for me - I put down a mine in front of Hanhar - He just stood there - didn't chase me (Mira) or anything - so I just walked on out the gate and into Trayus Academy - then played through the whole thing all the way up to and past Kreia. Funny thing, when Kreia tells the future, she leaves out Mira. Edit: Just took another look at how I managed to get this to work. The mine isn't necessary. I had done a save game at the beginning of the Mira/Hanhar fight. When I exited after that and reloaded, Hanhar is standing right in front of Mira and looks like he's ready to fight, but it turns out that Mira can just walk away from Hanhar and he doesn't follow. So it wasn't the mine that stopped Hanhar from following; it was the save and reload.

Here's a KOTOR III plot I thought of due to Metadigital's thread "Deus ex Machina: the Will of The Force ..., Does The Force have a will?". In response, WinterSun postulated that the force has a "will" that tends to keep a balance between LS and DS users. I took those ideas, threw in a dash of mechanics and a dash of the KOTOR II plot to arrive at the following. Let me know what you think. ************* THE WILL OF THE FORCE******************** Both Jedi and Sith masters have long understood that the Force seems to have its own independent will. This "will" promotes a balance between LS and DS Force users in the galaxy. Whenever either side achieves greater numbers and strength as compared to the other, there is a reaction in the Force that weakens the stonger side and strengthens the weaker side until balance is restored. Neither Sith nor Jedi fully understand how this happens, but both recognize this balancing power that seems inherent in the Force. Legend has it that an ancient tomb known as The Will of the Force contains secret knowledge explaining how the Force maintains the LS/DS balance. The tomb, if it ever existed, disappeared millenia ago somewhere outside the galaxy. Unknown to the Jedi Order, now reestablishing itself following the destruction of Malachor V, a group of Sith has found the The Will of the Force tomb in a world outside the galaxy once inhabited by the True Sith. The new Sith are using knowledge from this tomb in a nearly completed plan that threatens to finally eliminate all Jedi from the galaxy. The Will of the Force tomb reveals that the Force, although generally seen as one thing, is actually a neutral pool made up of light and dark components. Force users derive power from the Force by separating individual Force components from the pool. A purified component carries a LS or DS charge, much like a positive or negative electrical charge, because of the LS or DS imbalance between the purified component and the neutral Force pool. The LS or DS charge fuels the power responsible for the powers of Force Users. According to the tomb, the concentration of the Force can vary at different locations in the universe due to various factors. One such factor involves the activity of Force users in an area. Under normal circumstances Force users have a negligible impact on the Force pool. However in situations where the relative strength of LS and DS users becomes imbalanced, there is a corresponding imbalance in the components of the Force pool that limits availability of the overused Force component, resulting in Force powers of diminished strength for users of that Force component. An high severity imbalance could virtualy eliminate all Force powers of affected Force users. The Will of the Force tomb has been hidden for millenia because misuse of its knowledge in ancient times corrupted nearly an entire galaxy and became a threat to many other galaxies. Using knowledge from the tomb, the True Sith designed an army of ciphers whose exact nature, machines or androids, is currently unknown. The cipher army was capable of stripping all LS Force components from the Force pool, rendering LS Force users defenseless. The new Sith have learned where to find True Sith blueprints for producing the LS Force ciphers. They must be stopped. ********************

Here's a thought. If we combine WinterSun's interpretation of Metadigital's initial inquiry of whether the Force has a will, and then add a dash of the KotOR II plot, we could arrive at the following (that might be pursued in KotOR III or later). ************* THE WILL OF THE FORCE******************** Both Jedi and Sith masters have long understood that the Force seems to have its own independent will. This "will" promotes a balance between LS and DS Force users in the galaxy. Whenever either side achieves greater numbers and strength as compared to the other, there is a reaction in the Force that weakens the stonger side and strengthens the weaker side until balance is restored. Neither Sith nor Jedi fully understand how this happens, but both recognize this balancing power that seems inherent in the Force. Legend has it that an ancient tomb known as The Will of the Force contains secret knowledge explaining how the Force maintains the LS/DS balance. The tomb, if it ever existed, disappeared millenia ago somewhere outside the galaxy. Unknown to the Jedi Order, now reestablishing itself following the destruction of Malachor V, a group of Sith has found the The Will of the Force tomb in a world outside the galaxy once inhabited by the True Sith. The new Sith are using knowledge from this tomb in a nearly completed plan that threatens to finally eliminate all Jedi from the galaxy. The The Will of the Force tomb reveals that the Force, although generally seen as one thing, is actually a neutral pool made up of light and dark components. Force users derive power from the Force by separating individual Force components from the pool. A purified component carries a LS or DS charge, much like a positive or negative electrical charge, because of the LS or DS imbalance between purified component and the neutral Force pool. The LS or DS charge fuels the power responsible for the powers of Force Users. According to the tomb, the concentration of the Force can vary at different locations in the universe due to various factors. One such factor involves the activity of Force users in an area. Under normal circumstances Force users have a negligible impact on the Force pool. However in situations where the relative strength of LS and DS users becomes imbalanced, there is a corresponding imbalance in the components of the Force pool that limits availability of the overused Force component, resulting in Force powers of diminished strength for users of that Force component. An high severity imbalance could virtualy eliminate all Force powers of affected Force users. The The Will of the Force has been hidden for millenia because misuse of its knowledge in ancient times corrupted nearly an entire galaxy and became a threat to many other galaxies. Using knowledge from the tomb, the True Sith designed an army of ciphers whose exact nature, machines or androids, is currently unknown. The cipher army was capable of stripping all LS Force components from the Force pool, rendering LS Force users defenseless. The new Sith have learned where to find True Sith blueprints for producing the LS Force ciphers. They must be stopped. ******************** I plan to put a copy of this in the KotOR III thread.

It is not needed. If you fight her, you will see it anyways. Take a look at the Attachment... You will see similar things when Traya attacks your party. Then take a look to her Attack Breakdown and her Defense Breakdown (when you attacked her) Note that Then see any other additions after you used Force Powers you have found out that it is still in effect. But as I said; Don't expect it... As you can see from the Screen Kreia has no modifiers from me at the moment. Class 31 (lvl), dex mod and base are not Force Effects. I have no idea if I had Force Effects on at the moment, but if you see an 4th modifier here after using a defensive power, she will profit from your powers. If it stays 3 (note that her Defensive AC is dependant on your chars power/lvl), who are not changed from before you used your Force Power, it has proven the Bond doesn't work her, technically... This one displays my PC's attack. A similar line of numbers will appear if Traya attacks your PC, allowing you to see her Attack, and your own Defense AC (if it isn't the same as in your char screen you noted a bug, there are some...) If it wasn't my furthest Savegame was before entering the Harbinger, I would check it myself... damn 1.0B... Nope. We are getting abit Off-topic here... But still look into one of the game's many possible "overlooks" <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Oh Kaaaay - Got it done. Using your method to check on Kreia's defense stats during the final Malachor V battle, I found that no Force Power I used on the Exile had any effect on Kreia's Defense stats. Hence, I suppose we can conclude -- THE FORCE BOND WAS BROKEN! (w00t) (w00t) (w00t) ********************

The laws are laws, yes. And gravity does not have a will, correct. I was asking for some clarification on WinterSun's ideas of the capital "F" Force as a small "f" force. The definition of a will is not just a secret agenda. We can ultimately discover the behaviour of laws (even more abstruce ones, like quantum entanglement) because they are consistent, so just like in cryptography, security by obscurity si no security at all. To show evidence of sentience, there must be an arbitrary component. The Force must arbitrarily help DS or LS according to some secret (i.e. unknown and unknowable to us) agenda. I was talking about two different concepts, because it appeared that you had regarded the captial "F" Force as just a small "f" force, like gravity. Okay? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Didn't mean to be argumentative - if that's how I came across, I apologize. I'm extremely analytical, perhaps too analytical, but that's just who I am, and I gave up years ago trying to be someone else (particularly since I didn't seem to have a great deal of success at it). Also I must note that my typing skills aren't the best, so I may have meant "Force" when I wrote "force"; don't know for sure. Basically I think you have chosen a very difficult subject to discuss. Not a problem; indeed, notwithstanding the difficulty it is an interesting subject and the challenge is good. I suppose where I was going was to see whether we could actually compare the Force to known physical forces and determine whether they are different in fact, (considering the manner in which they operate). Either way it might give interesting results and either way there might be some derivation (based on how the physical laws behave) that might be applied to the Force. No big deal... we've probably gone about as far as possible on this line of thought at any rate.

Define "cool" though. I thought some of the robes in TSL were much better looking and gave a much more "authentic" Jedi feel than in K1. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Cool is defined by whatever I think is cool. :cool: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think you're right that some sort of a cool clothing selection would go over well. I've heard others ask for that. It's not something I would care a whole lot about, but I'm a guy, and like many other guys, could be considered "less than gifted" in this area.

Great points about Japan and violence. Regarding any link between violent feelings and video games, ppl need to remember that a common problem with analyzing any statistical link is jumping to a cause-effect conclusion. A statistical link alone doesn't evidence a cause-effect relationship. Often two things are linked because they are both related to a third element (which can be the cause of the linked items).

There is no question that some sort of a beneficial subconscious analysis or reorganization takes place during sleep. One very effective technique for writing is to tackle part of a writing task and then sleep. Writers, both of fiction and nonfiction, agree that when they continue the task the next day, they seem to have somehow figured out where they need to go with their writing the next day. Conventional wisdom reflects a similar understanding with the advice that, given a difficult problem a good way to reach the best solution is to "sleep on it".

More recent theories of dreams (makes sense to me) go like this. During the REM portion of sleep, a large electrical shock goes along the spinal cord. This is believed to coincide with the time we dream. It is also believed to coincide with the time when we cleanse our daily short term memories (some of the day's memories are moved to long term storage, the rest are basicly wiped clean). We remember our dreams only if we wake up during this critical period. What can be postulated is that if we awake during this time of massive, multi-thread processing of the previous day's information, the conscious brain is confronted with a number of feelings, visions, thoughts, etc., which make no sense whatsoever. But part of the "duty" of the conscious brain is to make sense of things we experience. Under the "wake up during information processing scenario", our conscious brain tries to make a story to connect all of the strange info inot some semi-coherent story. And we now have a dream. The true parts of the dream is that most of the various bits and pieces of the dream do represent something we saw, experienced, worried about, or otherwise mentally engaged with, during the previous day.

Some interesting statistics: An estimated 89,000 cases of child sexual abuse were substantiated in 2000 in the United States. (http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/factsheet/childsexabuse.htm) (Interestingly, there has been a 40% decline in the estimated number of child sexual abuse substantiations since 1992.) Two Japan Times articles report a total of 466 arrests in Japan for the year 2004 for child molestation. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getart...n20050601f2.htm http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getart...n20050520a2.htm Japan Population, 127,214,499 (July 2003) http://education.yahoo.com/reference/factbook/ja/popula.html U.S. Population, 290,809,777 (July, 2003) http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004986.html ************************* Note that these statistics are not an exact comparison. But the absolute difference in the per capita numbers is astounding.

I'm pretty sure that China was the locale, and the individual has already been convicted and sentenced by the courts. But anyone looking to use this incident to support a link between real world violence and video games is completely ignoring the entire science of statistical analysis. Simply put, one incident cannot possibly establish a statistical link, much less a cause-effect relationship.

Yes exactly. Thank you. And the violent sex "manga" comics (that include lots of forced sex) are a huge seller in Japan. Yet the incedence of rape on a per capita basis in Japan is miniscule compared to the US.

I've been through this debate (not here) before. It's incredible how ppl see only what they believe supports their postition. But consider that conventional psychology tells us that an activity to release our anger actually reduces our violent tendencies (some psychologists recommend things like hitting a target with a foam bat to release feelings of anger). Similarly, conventional wisdom tells us to write a letter to a person with whom we are angry, and fully express our anger in the letter, then trash the letter, in order to overcome our feelings of anger. Statistically, violence has decreased in the US over the past decade (don't know if that includes the last couple of years). However the use of violent video games has increased during the same period. To me it seems quite possible that the anger release achieved by playing violent video games might be responsible for the decrease in real world violence. Finally, what about the impact of real world violence. Currently in the US we have a President who repeatedly tells everyone in real life video, that violence is the only way to deal with problems. Negotiation does not work. Following the rule of law and relying on national and international law enforcement agencies will not work. Only the direct violence of war can solve our problems. Doesn't this line of thinking from our national "leader" coupled with daily exposure to real violence (news reports about the war) cause violence? Meh.

OK. That helps. Thanks. I have a savegame that's several hours away from the end. Will play through that and check the Force Effects as per your reommendation, and report here unless someone else does this first (hopefully somewone will save me the time necessary for the remaining playthrough).

But Kreia isn't in my party. When I looked previously, (don't have that save game available at the moment) I couldn't access any real time stats for Kreia, so I couldn't tell if they were applied to Kreia or not.

Since Kreia is no longer in my party at the ending, I can't access her stats as far as I can tell. Btw, just checked a save game and found that "Force Chain" is a feat (not a power). The entry for this feat reads "You and Kreia have a special bond. Most beneficial powers used on one of you automatically affects the other. For example, if Kreia activates Force Resistance then you will also receive it's bnefits." The feat remains in my stats during the end-game Malachor V fight (but as stated above, I don't know how to tell if it actually functions at this point). *******************

The force bond between Exile and Kreia is reflected in Exile's force powers as a "force chain" power (I think that's the precise term used). On one playthrough, I checked Exile's force powers during the end fight at Malachor V (thinking that if the force bond had been broken, the force chain power would disappear), but found that the force chain power was still there. I have wondered whether any force powers that Exile activates (uses) are also activated on Kreia during the fight on Malachor V (as they would be at earlier times in the game) but since Kreia isn't a part of the party at this point, I'm not sure how I could tell.

Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.

Metadigital; Your comments on the second part above seem to agree with WinterSun that a force which achieves balance would be considered a force with will. To some extent I raised my question (on which you commented in part one of your response) because I don't think your original question can be debated or answered unless we know which things fit the criteria. A force that tends towards nuetral would fit with all other predetermined laws of nature that we know of. For example with clouds moving through the upper atmosphere, it is possible that the clouds can accumulate static charge. If the charge becomes too much different than that of a nearby object (earth), the excess charge is discharged from the clouds to earth. The process of discharge generates a stream of energy between the clouds and earth that we call lightning. In chemistry and physics, we find that the natural physical laws force things in the direction of the lowest state of energy. So if we mix oxygen ( a high energy molecule) with hydrogen (another high energy molecule), and add just the smallest amound of activation energy (in the form of a spark), we get an explosive reaction which results in water (a low energy molecule) plus heat (free energy). Another example is the conventional battery; the separated charges (that can be accessed through the positive and negative terminals) are simply not "happy" in that state in that natural physical laws want them to be in a different state. So if we allow any electrical conductive path between the terminals, we get energy flow that drives back towards a neutral state. If this is what is meant by "will" then we would be dealing with a conventional natural force. Perhaps of greater interest might be to ask how one might separate out individual dark side or light side components from a pool of neutral force energy. For example if I have a large container of gas at a given temperature, I can use work to heat or cool part of the gas, which I can maintain at that second temperature only so long as I segregate it from the remainder of the gas. If I allow the two to mix or exchange energy (by putting a heat conductive wall between them) they will exchange energy until both are the same temperature again. I could go on with further examples, but I think this is enough. To me it isn't enough that the rules of a physical phenominon are "hidden" because the purpose of science is to "discover" the hidden rules. But the discovery of those rules does hold great meaning and potential for all of us. Are we on convergent or divergent paths?

This is my personal opinion,so feel free to prove me wrong :D In SW-ANH,Obi-wan tells Luke that "all life is connected to the Force".Later,after the destruction of Alderaan,he says something along the lines of "I felt a distubance in the Force,as if millions of souls cried out in terror".So,it's clear that emotions are transmitted through the Force. If enough people feel "good" emotions(love,happinessand so forth)the nature of the Force could swing towards the Lightside;and conversely for "dark" emotions.Either extreme is undesirable as people need both kinds to function properly.So,if the Force swings to one extreme,it works through Force sensitives to bring it back into balance,eg Anakin Skywalker destroyed the Jedi Order.Unfortunately he went too far and brought the Dark Side into dominance,and so the Force was required to work through Luke,bringing the Force into balance again,in what is probably a never ending cycle. Interestingly,I was intending to say that the Force doesn't have a will,but now I'm thinking otherwise.It must be the Force working through me " <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Heh. btw - if your analysis is right, it would seem that neutral would be the best place to stay.

Your question may be more complex than you realize. For example, I've attended lectures where the lecturer requests everyone who can't hear to raise their hand. This can be problematic in that the group targeted by the request, i.e., people who can't hear the lecturer, won't hear the lecturer's request. Hopefully this thread was initiated in regard to a specific problem, in which case a specific dialog can be identified in response to your query. However, it is possible that the response might be, "How do I know what it is that I don't know?". (Good question.)

I have a question; probably for Metadigital, but all input is welcomed. What is meant by "Does the Force have a will?" More specifically, it seems to me that any physical force or physical thing is ultimately defined by a set of rules. For example "electromagnetism" is a force that acts on structures having electrical charge. Frozen water, or ice, follows a definite set of rules; at a given pressure and temperature, water does or does not exist as a solid, i.e., ice. Traditional science also includes other forces, such as entropy, a force defining a rule that systems change in the direction of disorder. How then do we distinguish these forces and things from a force that has a will? At a first level of approximation, I suppose we might say that the physical laws of normal forces are static, that is, predetermined. On further analysis however, when we add modern complexities of physics, such as "relativity", to our analysis, we find that the rules can change under certain circumstances, i.e., the rules governing mass and length will change depending on velocity. Nevertheless, the rules governing how the rules change are predetermined. So, what is meant by a force with a "will"? Does having a will mean that something has the capacity to act in an arbitrary (not predetermined) fashion? If "will" means something else, do any of the traditional physical forces have a will? What criteria shall we apply to test whether something does, or does not, have a will?

heh heh - about time somebody said that. (w00t)