There’s some lore reason that ogryn use heavy stubbers instead of bolters and heavy bolters; something about them being too complicated for ogryn to reliably use properly, but I don’t super care about that, and it’s not like this game has to adhere to the lore ultra hard considering it’s about taking down massive hordes of heretics including chaos ogryn, daemonhosts, beasts of nurgle, chaos spawn, etc with a squad of four bozos who are only six points per model.
So yeah, stub pistols and heavy bolters. I’m happy Ogryn are finally getting some two handed smashing stuff. Crushers get those sidewalk-squares-on-sticks, I want one too.
Speaking of stuff the heretics get, I want a hellgun for the Veteran. Scab gunners have them, so we know they’ve got some on Atoma. I’d give it a huge amount of ammo, a giant magazine size, high suppression, and damage per shot similar to a regular infantry lasgun, but its accuracy is pretty awful even when braced, so it’s almost useless for getting headshots.
I’d also really like a new Plasmagun that functions exactly like the one from Space Marine, and it should definitely be the Graia Pattern, because Space Marine takes place on Graia.
oh and a new hammer that’s a straight port of vermintide’s reckoner.
Another idea was adding one or two more supporty force staves, kinda in line with that one Kerillian got that just stuns people. Staves that cast other psyker powers, basically. Poking around old rulebooks and 40k wikis, there’s stuff like “Enfeeble,” that could be like a slow and damage debuff, “Terrifying Visions” that could be area suppression, “Mental Fortitude” cast toughness regeneration and/or suppression immunity on allies, “Nightshroud” reduce accuracy on enemies and reduce threat on allies? Like Kerillian’s staff, the left click would still be some kind of simple attack. I feel like there’s a lot of potential for psykers to be something of a support class, given that they’ve got smite and telekine shield.
UH OH YOU GOT ME STARTED
The problem with a laspistol + chainsword or whatever pairing is that we have two kinds of chainsword and two kinds of laspistol, and also three kinds of combat axe and two power swords and three daggers etcetc and if they try to make a pairing for every possible combination they’ll need to make like over a hundred new weapons, but if they only make like two or three combinations then everybody will rightly be all like hey if I can hold a laspistol and a chainsword at the same time why can’t I hold a laspistol and an axe at the same time? or why can’t I hold a bolt pistol and a power sword at the same time? or why can’t I hold the other laspistol and a chainsword at the same time?
So I had this idea of a loadout system where instead of having a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, you have two loadouts, each loadout has a Main Hand slot and an Off Hand slot. Weapons all have a Size: One Handed, Main Hand Only, or Two Handed, and you can mix and match however you like. Laspistol and dagger, two laspistols, revolver and chainsword, sword and dagger, two daggers, two chainswords, whatever.
Well not sure about two chainswords, those things might be Main Hand Only. Maybe the zealot could have a special skill that lets them wield Main Hand Only weapons in their Off Hands so they can run around with two chain axes if they really want.
All the non-two hand guns are One Handed, none of them are Main Hand Only, even the bolt pistols and revolvers. I imagine power swords, chain swords, chain axes, combat axes, and force swords would be Main Hand Only, while daggers, swords, and tactical axes can also be held in the off hand.
The control scheme would work like this:
Basically, whatever is in the Main Hand gets the usual controls. If it’s a gun, then left click is shoot, and right click is aim. If it’s melee, then left click is swing, and right click is block. The Special Action button then becomes the Off Hand. If the Off Hand weapon is a gun, you fire it. If the Off Hand weapon is melee, you do a quick strike with it.
But, Blocking and Aiming/Bracing happen together. If you have one gun and one melee weapon, right click will block with the melee weapon and aim the gun at the same time, regardless of which is in the main hand and which is in the off hand.
If you have two guns, right click will aim both of them, or brace both of them, depending on what the Main Hand is. IE, if you have a laspistol in your main hand and an autopistol in your off hand, you’ll aim down sights when you hold right click, but if you have an autopistol in your main hand and a laspistol in your off hand, you’ll brace the autopistol with your laspistol. If you have two guns, you fire them both by mashing the left click and the special action button at the same time.
Dual melee weapons wouldn’t work like in Vermintide though. You would still mostly be using your main hand. Mashing left and special would still be quite fast though, and possibly faster than swinging just your main weapon. The point of a melee weapon in your off hand is to have something really fast and disruptive.
This system would have some drawbacks of course. Using your off hand weapon takes the place of any special action either weapon would usually have. That means no quick gut punches with the dagger, or alternate strikes with the axe, and most importantly no revving chain weapons or lighting up power swords or force swords.
Blocking wouldn’t change, but dual wielding means heavy attacks are one handed, so they would be less powerful than if you were using only the melee weapon by itself, even if you have two melee weapons. Additionally, you would probably also attack slightly slower with a second weapon in your off hand.
Guns would have some pretty significant penalties though. They would take a hit to accuracy, moreso if in the off hand. They would also take longer to reload, and probably also have significantly reduced ammo capacity.
Being able to carry a second gun would allow for a lot more tactical flexibility (sure would be nice if I could carry a flamer AND a revolver to kill snipers with), but it would do so at the expense of your melee capabilities, so it wouldn’t be obviously a better idea to always pack a sidearm.
Ogryn are unfortunately getting the short end of the stick with this system, since literally all their guns are two handed. But, on the bright side, they would have the shield, and would be able to mix and match basically any melee weapon they want with it.
Oh wait I forgot about the grenade gauntlet, that’s one handed. Shield and grenade gauntlet, that’d kick ass.
