XCOM2 Pistol as Primary Weapon - can it be done?

[NephilimNexus]

So I finally managed to figure out how to add new character classes into the game without it crashing, which is a relief, and now I'm hoping to be able to do something a bit different: Making a class where the Pistol is their Primary weapon.

 

Now I can change the data in the ModBuddy just fine and it doesn't show any errors on Build. The catch is that once in game it does nothing - the character is still stuck holding an assault rifle and none of their Pistol abilities actually result in a pistol animation being used for anything. It doesn't crash, it doesn't bug out, it just refuses to accept that they are carrying a pistol at all.

 

Is this something so deeply hardcoded into the game that I may as well give up or do you think there is a workaround possible?

[Kenshkrix]

The main issue with it is that the pistol abilities are set to use the 'secondary' weapon.

 

Offhand I'd suggest just making a primary weapon that's also a pistol, and have them carry two pistols around, but making it display properly isn't my field of expertise.

[NephilimNexus]

True, but that was easy enough to change. It was just a matter of changing the text the abilities to read PrimaryWeapon instead of SecondaryWeapon, just like the pistol itself. It's not that the abilities aren't working - as far as I can tell they are. The problem is that it still forces my soldier to carry an assault rifle, and uses it instead of their pistol.

 

I did noticed in the Workshop something called the "Officer Mod" where someone has apparently found a way to make it work, but from what I could glean the way they did it was to add an entirely new weapon to the game that just happens to have the same stats as the pistol and then forced the new class to use it. Which frankly seems like a real hassle, especially since it would mean editing the research and engineering trees to insert all the upgrades into it as well.