Dual Wielding Pistols?

[Captain Bipto]

I see from the wiki and ingame text dual wielding of pistols is alluded to.  Is this function available beyond just using two pistols (not in tandem but one pistol at a time?)

[shevegen]

shotgun cowboys!

[Chriswriter90]

shotgun cowboys!

That doesn't help

I'm confused about it too

[Captain Bipto]

Yeah I see the alien mooks running around sometimes with two pistols but I haven't seen them shoot both at the same time.  This would be a cool feature to have!

[Jagger]

You can have a pistol in each hand, (I last played 2.2, so I may be outdated, or just plain wrong) but it doesn't help you any. You can pick which one to fire, but there's no fire both option, hence the uselessness, better to have different one handed weapons (One handed, and one handed fire of course)

[Captain Bipto]

The only advantage I can see is that you do not have to reload as often.  This is what I did in x-com (where you could not shoot at the same time BUT could dual wield just about anything), I would load up on pistols for my scouts.  Course now I just use SMGs.

[Jagger]

I always carry the extra rounds (Due to haveing plenty space) but I hardly ever reload more than once, if that. So I don't think it's helps at all. I think there's plans, but there are better straegies atm (Again, I haven't tried 2.2.1 yet, too big a download to justify what the changelog tells me)

[Captain Bipto]

I suppose thats true.  Like I said I use SMGs for my scouts and the Medic is too busy holding a medic kit for it to matter for him.  Even with gunfighting enabled I doubt people would do it with anything weaker than a laser pistol (though perhaps machine pistols). 

[Doctor J]

There is a proposal that any actor wielding two identical one handed weapons to simultaneously fire/swing both.  Note that this has not been placed on any TODO list that i've seen, so it might not be something the devs are too excited about.  As a matter of fact, it shouldn't be in the text until it exists, but there's a lot of that in the game.  Nonetheless, anybody can code it and submit a patch if you like the idea that much.

[Aiki-Knight]

Shooting two pistols simultaneously is really quite unrealistic. It can be done, but with terrible accuracy. The reality of firing a handgun is that they're fairly inaccurate, and a carefully aimed, single-weapon shot is many times more likely to hit the target than single-hand-firing two weapons without careful aim. It's a TV thing that is totally unrealistic. I've never seen any police officer, soldier, or special forces in footage wielding two pistols or even carrying a sidearm on each hip. Backup weapons are a different story.

[Destructavator]

Shooting two pistols simultaneously is really quite unrealistic. It can be done, but with terrible accuracy. The reality of firing a handgun is that they're fairly inaccurate, and a carefully aimed, single-weapon shot is many times more likely to hit the target than single-hand-firing two weapons without careful aim. It's a TV thing that is totally unrealistic. I've never seen any police officer, soldier, or special forces in footage wielding two pistols or even carrying a sidearm on each hip. Backup weapons are a different story.

This is quite true, as far as I know.  I used to have a job in law enforcement myself, and from what I saw working that job I have to agree.

There is, however, an advantage to one-handed weapons, and this already works in the game:  I've had units with large, heavy weapons that take a lot of TU to fire come around a corner and find an alien, then not quite have enough TU to fire and run back to cover.  The pistols are very quick, and it takes less TU to simply pull one from the holster and shoot it then for a soldier to try to swing a big, clunky heavy-duty weapon around and aim it to fire.  This also has some realism IMO, and it's already implemented and works in the game.

[Jagger]

A major reason irl people don't use two weapons at once, legalities. In most countries it is illegal to weild two firearms at once.

But yes, having fired guns, ranging from handguns to semi-autos, I can say that even with a weak pistol, I'd use one for accuracy, unless it was against a crowd, and I was firing indescriminately.

[Nevasith]

I dont know how it is with other countries, but if you have a weapon wielding permission you can have as much as you bought in Poland. Still its very impractical- more ammo consumption with much much less accuracy. Waste of money IMHO.
On the other hand laser weapon has no recoil, so it in fact should be usefu...

[DanielOR]

Jagger, are you serious?  There is a situation where it is legal to fire one, but not two weapons?  Wow.

I imagine, aiming with two (even recoil-less) weapons at the same time is damn near impossible.  So, penalty to accuracy in dual mode?

Do we really need it?  I'd vote to keep this fire mode pretty low on dev priority list.

[Sophisanmus]

I can think of some situations where dual-wielding weapons could be feasible/useful, considering the accuracy penalty.  Covering a door from the side, perhaps 2-3 spaces away, with reaction fire, should an alien come barging through.  I don't think it should be restricted to identical weapons, but similarly-classed weapons: pistols with pistols, rifles with rifles, RPGs with RPGs (though that would probably only make sense for a barn broadside that needs breaking).

I would, offhand, throw out that dual-firing options could bridge similar single-fire modes from both weapons into one option, costing 75% of each bridged mode (i.e. firing a single shot from one costing 8 and the other costing 6 together would cost 11, with an accuracy penalty).

I think the dual-wielding concept, however, does need to be addressed for the late-game, with the inclusion of powered armors.  From the looks of things, human infantry armor may reach the point of having multiple weapon systems installed for simultaneous use, with computer targeting and recoil management to make accuracy manageable.  Now, loading four primary weapons onto such a powered-infantry suit might be unreasonable, from a believability and codeability standpoint, but two would be explainable.  Some method of firing two compatible weapons together would be needed.