[Suggestion] How come engies and medics cannot wield their respective tools with a pistol?

Title. And yes, its perfectly fine imo for engies -and- medics to heal the units they are allowed to -and- to stick a bullet to anyone's head at the same time.
And before you scream obscenities at me... *points to the stalker infil eating glue on the corner
-EDIT- Meant to suggest a dual-wield... naaa you get the idea. Am sleepy head am dumdum atm.

Yes they should not have to remove their attack abilities just to repair or heal. The method of "look at target and hold trigger" just takes players out of the game. Being able to dual wield would at least let them defend themselves instantly.

I would even go further: change how they work entirely so players dont have to constantly look and hold a trigger. The Engineer for example could simply look at an object that needs repairs and hit "F" to start the repairs, as long as he remains close it will repair until it overheats (or you hit F again). You can add some penalties to movement or something, but the main idea would be to keep players able to play rather than look at their target passively and do nothing besides a strafingdance.

I suggested other alternatives as well, such as class-specific UB weapons for all classes to equip regardless of the weapon being able to handle other UB weapons. That way a Medic can fire a medkit against someone and heal a set amount of health over X seconds at a distance. Quick, takes skill the farther your target is but it can be used at range and has its own in-build limits in how many heals you can give before needing to reload (it could have a small magazine).
Would be more perfect if UB weapons could be fired any time, rather than need to be switched to. Press X to fire using the weapons current COF and get a COF growth for firing. If empty the UB weapon/tool can be reloaded by pressing X again. Simple and effective as it does not force you to switch or reload immediately. Would require current UB weapons to be altered since they would be OP if you could fire them immediately.

I was going to rhetorically ask "well both left and right click are already important for both tools, how else would you implement it?", but incidentally, there is a keybind ingame called "Tertiary Fire" which iirc isn't used for anything anymore. A lot of players don't have a mouse with extra buttons though, so figuring out a way to organize all three in places that a new player with default settings could figure out would be a challenge.

If a medic is getting ready to regenerate my severed arms I certainly would hope that their full attention is on it!
Likewise I can only imagine the horrific abominations that could arise if your not paying full attention while reanimating a corpse!

Same with enigineers and their welding tools,
Don't wanna weld someone's skin instead of their max suit all because you thought it'd be a good idea to take shots at enemies!
No bonus cheque for you!

probably best that these professionals keep their focus on the task at hand!

Its more to do with game mechanics. You could let players drag their vehicle to a garage somewhere and require a bunch of engineers to repair it, or you could let them use a repairgun so the gameplay can more or less continue.
However when using the repairgun you are just looking at the thing you repair, taking you out of the game somewhat. Since we cut 99% of vehicle repair in favor of better gameplay, why not go a bit further?
Although if you could track where players/tanks are hit and repair them by aiming for that, but also deliberately fuse and melt your enemies it would already be a lot better since you wouldn't be throwing all your firepower away just to look at your allies and hold a button.

yups, i was just thinking of realistic reasons,
but from a gameplay perspective I'd also hate to come across a squad carapace medics all spamming healing beam on eachother while mowing people down with NS sidearms XD

I've seen Medicballs that would turn on their AOE heal as they start combat and firing AR's. Such Medicballs always peter out almost immediately. I doubt that carapace Medics healing each other would be that powerful. Just imagine the logistics! Easiest would be to pair up all Medics and let them heal each other, which now means they have to stick close together and know the path they need to take. Just like a carapace player being healed when peaking does not make them sudden tanks these carapace Medics wouldn't be either (exception: players doing ADAD dances like medkit chuggers, but that messes with your aim as well).