Coming off of my first major project, K1 Companion Sidequest Rewards, my focus is still on gameplay/design enhancements for the first Kotor. Something that struck me during my most recent playthrough is how unimportant/tacked on skills feel. This next project's goal will be to further imbed skills into K1's gameplay, validating INT/Sent/Skill focused builds as a more meaningful choice for players.
The outline for this project builds on the awesome work by @jc2 and their Improved Grenades mod. For the other skills, I have the following ideas (ascending rank in terms of perceived difficulty):
Computer Use → "Unlocking" T3-M4's ability to act as an upgrade bench (ala my Sidequest Reward mod)
Treat Injury → Swapping Canderous Implants (ala TSL)
Repair → Custom skill challenge with T3-M4 to create unique items:
Dual Wieldable Stun Batons
Lightsaber variants (Reg/Short/Double)
Unique Droid Items for T3-M4/HK-47
Recreate Revan's "Original" lightsaber
Persuade → Make all* merchants adjust their prices based on persuade skill
Awareness → Swap out all Sith assassin encounters ("Malak was most displeased...") with:
Create some kind of trigger that initiates a cutscene/dialog
Spawn in Sith assassins during scene, framed as though they came out of stealth
If Awareness (per current party member) is less than X, they lose half their health
Regular dialog/Regular combat
(Potential; Spawn in more assassins based on player level/difficulty)
I have a sense on how to approach all of these ideas except the last one...creating custom encounters is totally out of my current understanding. As always, if anyone has any tips/comments/warnings on any of the above, I am eager to hear them.