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[Base Framework:]

Ok, since it's been so long in coming, I feel I owe it to the pbase to keep you updated on the progress of the new force system, as well as a few other things that will be coming in when the force system's done.

I'll use a color code to indicate degree of progress.  Anything in red hasn't been touched yet, and anything in green is done.  Orange, yellow, and yellow-green will indicate levels in between.

I'll try to update this thread daily.

Base Framework:

• Division of skills into disciplines
• Force point awards on levelup
• Training to assign force points to disciplines
• Force point resetting
• Selection of major and minor foci
• Broken equipment no longer scrapping
• Possessed mobs treated as players with the same skillset as their possesser

Control:

• Breath Control
• Art of Movement
• Force Speed
• Force Valor
• Force Body
• Crucitorn
• Force Comprehension
• Battlemind
• Battle Meditation
• Force Enlightenment
• Dark Rage

Sense:

• Detect Force
• Psychometry
• Heightened Awareness
• Detect Invisible
• Bend Light
• Detect Illusion
• True Sight
• Sense Life
• Farsight
• Shatterpoint
  

Affect Mind:

• Force Persuasion
• Minor Illusion
• Telepathy
• Moderate Illusion
• Force Stun
• Major Illusion
• Force Soothing
• Dispel Illusion
• Force Stasis
• Doppleganger
  

Telekinesis:

• Levitate
• Force Push
• Force Wound
• Force Pull
• Force Choke
• Hurl Object
• Throw Lightsaber
• Force Crush
• Triple Wield
• Force Repulse

Lightsaber Combat:

• Form I: Shii-cho
• Form II: Makashi
• Form III: Soresu
• Form IV: Ataru
• Jar'kai
• Form V-a: Shien
• Form V-b: Djem So
• Form VI: Niman
• Form VII-a: Juyo
• Form VII-b: Vaapad

Healing:

• Healing Trance
• Cure Blindness
• Force Cure
• Cure Poison
• Force Heal
• Regeneration
• Lifeield
• Group Heal
• Disease Immunity
• Force Resuscitation

Energy Manipulation:

• Force Shock
• Combustion
• Electrify Weapon
• Force Lightning
• Electric Judgment
• Lightning Shield
• Spear of Midnight Black
• Lightning Storm
• Force Destruction
• Force Storm
  

Energy Absorption:

• Tapas
• Force Deflection
• Drain Force
• Drain Life
• Drain Energy
• Energy Transference
• Resist Energy
• Death Field
• Force Protection
• Force Absorb
  

Sith Alchemy:

• Enhance Creature
• Enhance Weapon
• Enhance Armor
• Strip Essence
• Makesithblade
• Makesithamulet
• Mask
• Reanimate Corpse
• Create Sithspawn
• Midichlorian Manipulation

Sith Magic:

• Spell of Concealment
• Spell of Revealing
• Waves of Darkness
• Force Blast
• Invoke Spirits
• Spell of Nullify Force
• Summon Fear
• Dark Side Web
• Memory Rub
• Possess
  

Misc other changes:

• Vibroblade damage was increased dramatically.  Vibroblades also will now be made using a vibration cell, which will determine its damage output.  A quest version of these items will be available for 20,000 qp.
• Poison on weapons now has a limited duration, after which the poison will need to be re-applied (as it has evaporated).  Unlike before, though, the weapon will not disintegrate after the poison wears off.
• The "aff" command can now take a target to see what is affecting an object (such as poison or electrify weapon)
• The slist bug that shows berserker skills under pilot has been fixed.
• In order to make room for the new saber stances that add to parry, parry has been reduced such that 100% parry would require a parry skill of 250%.
• Furthermore, parry was adjusted such that there is a slight bonus for attacking someone with a lower lightsaber combat rank than you, and a slight penalty for attacking someone with a higher one.  A tier 10 in lightsaber combat fighting a tier 0 in lightsaber combat (or a nonforcer) will get a 25% bonus, while the enemy will get a -25% penalty.  This makes it worthwhile for a saber fighter to continue investing points beyond whatever tier their chosen style is at.
• Your DR will no longer apply to your riposte damage.  (The DR of the player who made the original attack is what applies.)
• Rental ships now properly get stored after copyover instead of spawning all over the coruscant main platform
• The order command now works with "order all"
• For builders: NOHAIL and NOPORTAL flags have been added to prevent hailing from a room or portaling into it with force storm, respectively.
• Quest items have been fixed so that they can be given to engineers to be used as materials.
• Removed wanted flags.
  
• Added "resetarena" command to return all of your arena wins and losses to zero.
• Added "setalign" command to change your character's alignment, and removed other methods of changing align.
• Massive change in the way poison works to prepare for prestige classes (since the functionality of that is related to Combustion).  This took most of the day.  There's really nothing that any of you will notice at this point, though, as a lot of this was just prep work to make other things feasible in the future.
• Noticed and fixed an issue with cure ailments that made it always affect the medic even when they tried to use it on someone else.
• Added the immortal remort command, which will let you go back and choose new classes and stats for your character while keeping your name, bio, desc, possessions, etc.  This will allow you to essentially restart your character.  This will be done by an immortal, to prevent abuse (i.e., "Engineer gets bountied -> engineer suddenly becomes combatant").  A note: to keep things IC, you may be asked to RP your character's death in order to justify particularly infeasible swaps, such as Engineer to Combatant.  This will be accompanied by a slay and you will start back with your clone.
• Adepting has been removed.  You can continue using the practice command until you reach your max adept level.
• Clan hangers have been added on planets.  These are private landing pads that will be owned by clans and can be opened and closed like starship hangers, and otherwise work in the exact same way as a hanger.
• Added a "hot" sector for Nexus that's identical to the "cold" sector in Hoth, but will be stopped by an immunity to fire rather than an immunity to cold.

Today's progress:

Unrelated to the force system, I removed automatic wanted flags.  The new wanted flag system (see here) is not in, but automatic wanted flags have been a problem for a long time, and they're out.  If you commit a legal PK, then you can only be killed if someone besides the victim is able to find proof that you killed them.  (This means either a checkprints or an autopsy on the corpse, or direct eye witness.  The leadership command referenced in the above link isn't in.)  At that point, the government in question can 1) kill them themselves, 2) bounty them, or 3) contact the assassin's guild and put out a hit.

Force blast is finished.

Drain life is finished.

NOPORTAL and NOHAIL flags are finished.

Spear of Midnight Black is done.

Force Deflection is done.

That's all for tonight.  I should get a lot more done tomorrow than I got done today.

[Tier]

Allllright, a bit overdue for an update, but I've got quite a bit coming in this one.

Firstly, the major and minor foci are in.  With that comes a few adjustments to the levels.

Previously, the levels were set at (level/15)+3 for normal skills, (level/15)+4 for minor foci, and (level/15)+5 for major foci.  This has been changed to (level/15)+1 for normal skills, (level/15)+2 for minor foci, and (level/15)+3 for major foci.  To demonstrate the difference this causes, I'll show an updated version of the table from the original thread:

Tier		Level Obtained
	Major focus	Minor focus	No focus
1	1	1	1
2	1	1	1
3	1	1	5
4	10	15	20
5	25	30	35
6	40	45	50
7	55	60	65
8	70	75	80
9	85	90	95
10	100	--	--

So, looking at that table, you can see that, at level 20, you can get to tier 4 in your major foci, tier 3 in your minor foci, and only tier 2 in the other five disciplines.  Similarly, at level 100, you can achieve tier 10 in your major foci only, while your minor foci can only reach tier 9 and your other disciplines can only reach tier 8.

Now, I know some of you are going to freak out here, "Oh noes!  I can't reach tier 10 in five disciplines anymore!"  Before you go waving your arms around and screaming your feet off, though, look at the spells and skills available at tier 10.  Most of them are abilities that were only obtained by one or two people in the entire history of the star wars galaxy, and having even two of those is pushing it lore-wise.  They're also extremely powerful, so limiting you to only two of them is a balance decision.  Finally, this decision makes the foci meaningful even to the most powerful forcers in the game who have reached level 100, as their strongest disciplines will still remain their strongest disciplines, which serves to facilitate both strong RP even among the highest levels and more diversification of skills, which also matches more closely with lore, as most Jedi were more generalized in their skill sets rather than being so narrowly focused on just a part of the training.  (They had strengths in a field or two, but they were not necessarily focused on their strengths to the point of ignoring their weaknesses entirely.)

Another thing that was brought up in the other thread was the lack of a contending tier 10 ability in the healing tree.  So, I've reimagined the healing tree with some new and very much more potent abilities in the upper echelons, as well as moving the healing trance ability to level 1, along with some adjustments to its usefulness.  The new healing tree is as follows:

Healing:

• Healing Trance (The Jedi enters a deep trance, falling into a deep sleep from which he or she cannot awaken until the healing is completed.  While in this trance, the heal spell will be cast on the Jedi once every tick at zero FP cost.  This power cannot be used to heal others.)
  
• Cure Blindness (Exactly what it says on the tin!)
  
• Cure (Equivalent to our current Cure Serious spell.)
  
• Cure Poison (Look at the tin, it says it!)
  
• Heal (Equivalent to our current Heal spell.)
  
• Regenerate (Recovers 50 HP per round.)
  
• Disease Immunity (Provides immunity from all negative effects except for fatigue and force fatigue, which will take effect as usual.)
  
• Group Heal (Casts the heal spell on your entire group.)
  
• Heal Field (Creates a room effect that will restore 20 HP per round to everyone in the room.)
  
• Force Resuscitation (Can revive a person even AFTER death, as long as it's done quickly enough.  If used on a stunned person, this spell will bring them back to 1 HP and recover them even if they are below the -300 HP limit of aid.  However, if used on a player corpse within 30 minutes of the player's death, the player's file will be restored as if they never died in the first place.  This includes clan memberships and equipment, as long as the equipment is still on the corpse when the spell is cast - anything that was previously looted will not be restored to the player.  The corpse will disappear upon use, and when the player logs in again, they will log in in the room in which Force Resuscitation was used on their corpse.  They will retain all memories up to the point of death, including knowledge of the player who killed them.  If they were killed for a bounty, however, the bounty (having already been paid back) will no longer be in effect, and will have to be placed again.)

This should make the healing tree much more attractive.

I'll probably do some more work before I go to bed tonight, but since that's such a major change, I wanted to take the time to post it before I went back to work.

Alright.  To put everything up to steam, here's the plan:

I'm going to finish healing, energy manipulation, and sith magic, and then put it in as is.  After that, I'll be bringing it in one skill at a time from there on out until it's done.  With that, you'll have control, sense, lightsaber combat, healing, energy manipulation, and sith magic available as full disciplines (with the exception of detect illusion for sense, since there are no illusions to detect yet), along with scattered skills from the other four disciplines, when it first goes in.  I'll try to get at least one skill in a day from there on, but I'm not going to make any promises.  Hopefully, breaking it down like this will make it easier for me to get back into my previous steam-driven path on the change railroad.

Also, as a minor update, there are now skills in to reset your arena record and to set your alignment, and the other alignment changes are now removed, so you won't raise or lower your align by killing mobs or using force powers of any sort.

Today's progress:

• Massive change in the way poison works to prepare for prestige classes (since the functionality of that is related to Combustion).  This took most of the day.  There's really nothing that any of you will notice at this point, though, as a lot of this was just prep work to make other things feasible in the future.
  
• Noticed and fixed an issue with cure ailments that made it always affect the medic even when they tried to use it on someone else.
• Finished combustion.
• Added the immortal remort command, which will let you go back and choose new classes and stats for your character while keeping your name, bio, desc, possessions, etc.  This will allow you to essentially restart your character.  This will be done by an immortal, to prevent abuse (i.e., "Engineer gets bountied -> engineer suddenly becomes combatant").  A note: to keep things IC, you may be asked to RP your character's death in order to justify particularly infeasible swaps, such as Engineer to Combatant.  This will be accompanied by a slay and you will start back with your clone.
• Force Destruction is almost finished, only some balance tweaking remains.
  

Today's progress:

• Finished Force Destruction.  Modifications from the original writeup for force destruction include the inability to attack, dodge, or parry while charging energy.  The damage starts very small but increases exponentially each round, so the longer you survive before you release it, the more damage you'll do.
• Altered Carsanum since we no longer have sanctuary in the game.  It now fits its lore role more closely, adding 2 to every stat for its duration.
• Altered Andris, as well, so that its HP boost is much better.  At 100% spice refining it will add 250 HP for its duration.
• Force Resuscitation is finished.
• False Light Side Aura has been replaced with a new power named Memory Rub:
  
  • This spell erases the memory and skills of its target.  In application, it will disable the use of the last command the target used for 25 rounds.
    
• Detect Intent has been removed and replaced with the existing Heightened Awareness spell, which is now tier 3 with psychometry moved to tier 2.
  
• Disease immunity is finished.  Realizing how much this protects against, it's moved back to tier 9.
• Group Heal is done.
• Regeneration is done.
• Healing trance is done.
• Summon Fear is done.
• To reflect the apparently new canon name for it, Summon Darkness is now named Waves of Darkness.
• Spell of Seeing has been removed in favor of a canon option, Dark Side Web.  Seeing through Waves of Darkness will now be done with True Sight.
  • Dark Side Web: Conjures a web that ensnares your enemy in the Dark Side, severing their connection to the force, sapping their strength, and making them susceptible to damage.  Powerful debuff that does -25 to the enemy's effective force level and -4 to their strength, and makes susceptible to all forms of damage (in the same way as unravel defense).  Cure ailments will remove this debuff, and disease immunity prevents it from working at all.
• Waves of Darkness is complete.
• Dark Side Web is complete.
• Memory Rub is complete.
• Heal field is renamed to lifefield, as the opposite of deathfield.
• Lifefield is finished.

The only one left is Invoke Spirits.  I've been up all night working and I'm gonna take a break for a few hours, but invoke spirits will definitely be in by the end of the day.  After that, I have to finish Nexus enough to bring it in so there are teachers, and then it'll go live.

Some last minute changes that went in yesteday and today:

• Fixed a major bug in force resuscitation that could cause item duping and gold duping.
• Expanded Invoke Spirits considerably.  It now does the following:
  
  • Invoke Spirits: You can invoke one of nine spirits to expand your power greatly for your level/5 rounds.  Depending on the spirit you invoke, one of your force disciplines will be set to tier 10 for the duration of the spell, and you will know every skill in that discipline at 100%.  You will also gain +50 force level and double FP for the duration, but you will take 100 damage per round while the spell is in effect.  When the spell wears off (whether from taking too much time or from you running out of HP) you will be instantly set to 0 HP and stunned, and will be given a 100-round debuff that locks your fp at 0 and gives you -10 to all stats and -100 force level, and you will become susceptible to attacks as if you had been hit by Unravel Defense or Dark Side Web.  This debuff will not be stopped by disease immunity, but it can be cured by cure ailments.  Due to the permanent nature of Sith Alchemy (and the unlikelihood that any spirit would be able to do anything that requires so much time and concentration in their restless state) Sith Alchemy cannot be boosted using this spell.
    
  The spell has been moved to tier 5.
• Force Enlightenment has been expanded such that every FP usage while it is in effect is reduced by half.  This includes constant drain effects such as those that come with Juyo and Vaapad.
• Adepting has been removed; rather than spamming skills to max them, you can just go type practice a few extra times.  This is primarily to reduce the impact of this change and future ones on those who have spent a great deal of time adepting skills.  Once these major changes are done and things have settled, adepting may or may not be reinstated.
• Private clan hangers have been added to the game.  These work the same as a ship hanger: they can be opened or closed only by members of the clan who owns them, and no one can land there if they're not open, but anyone can if they are.
• Djem So, Juyo, and Vaapad now have a 15%, 25%, and 35% chance of breaking parry, respectively (the enemy's parry chances are reduced by that amount), thus making these higher-tier forms more appealing when fighting a soresu user.
• Added a "hot" sector for Nexus, which is identical to the "cold" sector on Hoth except that it requires an immunity to fire rather than an immunity to cold in order to avoid its damaging effects.  Naturally, there will be an item that grants such immunity on Nexus.