There's a reason its that way. A lot of networking problems are unsolvable or create serious issues to overcome due to lag/ping/connection issues, which sp games never encounter. This is one of the main reasons why there's a big difference between the two.
A server would be nice, and you might even be able to find members of the community willing to moderate it (that you could trust), so as not to have to worry about running out of time.
I still think MB2 is much more realistic when it comes to saber combat (watch some actual fencing videos...slow). HOWEVER, I do agree that it is too slow to be properly fun.
Sorry, wrote that too quick. Meant to say: "How to make force powers do radius based damage." I would imagine you could probably re-use a lot of the code used for the distance based chat to do so, but not really too sure about it.
Bots are really stupid. So unless you've altered the AI code, playing with humans is always more interesting. Unless you tormenting the ai...that can be fun.