Just a general query to see if people are interested in asking the developers to implement a dual wield feature for small arms or even light melee weapons. We see it a lot in lore with the Warp Spider, Astartes being bad-asses with dual bolt-pistols or chain axes in the case of a Khorne CSM, and the Orks....well they can do whatever they want with the dakka. In terms of balancing, dual wielding has never been known for accuracy or aiding you defensively and I would feel that depending on the weapons your wielding, your overall movement speed would drop as well in addition for reload being longer, even when using melee but that would be in terms of cool down between swings. The main benefit would be the ability to deal larger amounts of damage quickly in melee combat which would overcome shields if implemented or unit classes with large amounts of armour and health. In ranged, dual wielding would allow you to suppress a target more effectively over a larger area but of course your overall accuracy would deteriorate over distance as you can't really aim when dual wielding. Walkers or Dreadnoughts could also use the dual wield mechanic for ranged weapons such as twin assault cannons or a 1+1 combo of weapon systems depending on the amount of customization and points required to utilize. Games that successfully pulled off dual wielding in combat albeit in smaller player amounts: Halo 3 and Halo 2 MP, especially with the ability to choose both an armour damaging weapon and a health damaging weapon. Time-Splitters series especially when it came to pistols and the amount of accuracy falloff when strafing or running. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, even though the series is terrible, they did at least find a way to make dual wielding somewhat balanced in most regards. The only questionable mechanic is dual wielding shotguns because unless you're assisted by power-armour, you can't survive the recoil without dislocating a limb. Other things I wanted to throw out there is the damage type of weapon systems, more of a question to any devs who might happen across this. Most games break their damage profiles down to primary health damaging weapons such as incendiary rounds, hollow point, or explosive tipped to armour and shield penetrating weapons such as tungsten alloyed, adamantine tipped, or even warp assisted rounds. Combine this with the RNG for damage falloff and critical/mini-crit damage, these damage profiles can make dual wielding certain weapons in specific circumstances even more powerful than a heavy weapon. For instance, an Assault Marine dual wielding Bolt-Pistols while jumping and using Inferno Bolts could deal massive health damage before he/she even lands against say Orks on a battlement where they're already grouped up. You combine that with mag-locking them to your thigh and taking out a chainsword as you land, the combination of damage over time, area-of-effect weapon splash and then a rapid damaging melee weapon, you could take out maybe an entire squad of weaker light infantry as a medium infantry class where normally a heavy infantry class would of done the job.
I'm not really fussed about having e.g. two swords or two bolters for launch. Happy to wait for that post launch.
Same as Draigo to be honest... I'd rather see terminators implemented. Not hyped on playing them though, but not seeing a squad of these guys on battlefields would be dissapointing.
In 40K (& 30K) those who dual-wield do with pistols and are either named characters, Independent Characters, or Elites. That is because to truly do well whilst dual-wielding needs a lot of practice and experience. And most of those who do dual-wield are restricted to Bolt Pistols. P.S. Specialist rounds for Loyalist SM are generally restricted to Boltguns, as they need a larger shell than the pistol round and tend to be rare enough that they are shot singly rather than from a magazine, which is easier from a Bolter. So Loyalist Inferno Bolts cannot be fired from a pistol. The Chaos ones are different as they are Psychic/Magic and are used by Sorcerors in their Bolt Pistols.
I'm going to have to contest your claim about shotguns, I one handed my 12 Guage for shits and giggles and it worked out fine.
Did you fire a fully automatic shotgun that was sawed off one handed with your off hand using hi-ex rounds? That's what Call of Duty tried to say was realistic granted the Astartes could definitely do it but a normal human being would not be able to do it and maintain a high rate of fire with pinpoint accuracy and also not injure themselves. You also have to take into account you will be shot at while doing it so that also increases the chance of injury. I've fired shotguns as well ranging from the AA-12 slimmed down Swedish version to a standard Saiga-12 and one firing automatics is easy but pump action or single shell loaded ones you simply cannot do. It's like trying to fire a musket with one arm only.
