Having a lazy eye is a bad thing.

On first read of this I was quite against it, since the two items do very different things.

However, I can now see how this would work. The left click would be the shovel doing small hammering-like movements on a block, literally imitating how the pick currently acts.
The right click could then be used for the bigger shovel movements.

It makes it slightly less friendly to the newcomers, but it does free up an inventory space. And seeing that there's scope to adding more weapons, inventory spaces may need to be available (unless it's a 'pick-weapon-upon-spawn' implementation, and the ability to change weapon at your CP would be nice in that case).

I like this suggestion, both becasue it simplifies digging and harvesting, and because soldiers don't carry pickaxes around everywhere, as mentioned...

why not just remove the pick and have the shovel act like one (a pick), it certainly would prevent the MASSIVE TUNNEL WARZ that go on as either team hallows out the mountains.

have the shovel also be able to act as a melee weapon.

And what, sir, is wrong with Tunnel Warz??!?

I like this suggestion. Freeing up the item slots would really help as would moving them around. As Beret mention the rife needs to be in slot 1. I've died plenty of times trying to take out a rifle but getting a block or grenade instead.

@grendle

"why not just remove the pick and have the shovel act like one (a pick), it certainly would prevent the MASSIVE TUNNEL WARZ that go on as either team hallows out the mountains.

have the shovel also be able to act as a melee weapon. "

...did you even bother to read the suggestion?

Or are you one of those people who just sits around waiting for their turn to speak?

If you make pick=pick+shovel then i will not be able to predict what the griefer is going to do.

Having the shovel have pick as an alternative attack is an awesome Idea,
If anything is going to collect a block from digging into it, Its going to be a shovel.

Have you ever tried to use a pick on dirt? Its made for stone!
Not to mention right now a pick to the face does no damage,
Try doing that! In real life.

It makes much more sense for the shovel to have a "conservative dig" where the soldier shapes the dirt into a block, as well as a "fury dig" where collection is not the goal.

Removing the pick in this way would easily free up an Item slot for a weapon like a pistol, an Item that seems to be popular amongst most forum members.

@galaxy
What I meant by "shovel acts like pick" is that the shovel would only remove one block at a time, not 3, no matter which mouse button you press. I see no reason why this would harm the game-play other than making tunnels more difficult to dig and/or make greifing/fortress sapping just take a bit longer.

I agree with getting rid of the pick though, it seems a bit redundant to me (it seems odd to me to have 2 types of digging tools).

The reason I say this is because I see the way the shovel digs 3 blocks as overpowered, (as stupid as that sounds), It makes tunneling way to easy (it should be a long term effort and be quite a bit more risky). however this is my own opinion and your welcome to differ in your own seeing this is a forum.