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I believe all ranged weapons have the same melee DPS, which is 4.5 DPS at normal quality and ~7.5 DPS at legendary. Archotech arms do 7 DPS. Normal steel knives do 7.23 DPS. Power claws are 11 DPS. A legendary plasteel spear does 17.37 DPS.
For the most part a colonist in good armor with a high quality ranged weapon will be able to win a 1v1 melee fight with pretty much any human enemy the game throws at you (except some empire troops), but it's less than half as effective as a dedicated melee weapon. So it's typically not death if an enemy reaches your shooters, and in most cases it's better to let them melee than trying to back away, but a strong melee unit does a much better job at intercepting enemies. Simple sidearms makes dedicated melee colonists entirely pointless from what I understand of it, but probably doesn't significantly change the difficulty of the game.
My stance on the topic is to use the dual wield mod, which allows wielding a pistol and knife at the same time for example, the smaller "1 handed" weapons (by default). These are sub-optimal weapons so it's a trade off making a colonist slightly worse at either type of combat compared to a dedicated pawn in exchange for more combat flexibility. I also haven't really run into any conflicts or issues with the mod, it doesn't change pawn behavior so it tends to always just work.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1628211313
Maybe I'm not playing efficiently or to the fullest that Simple Sidearms offers, but I still have dedicated close combat specialists who have passions in Melee that occasionally moonlight as ranged infantry or with grenades/rocket launchers if closing in is too dangerous (using Toggleable Shields to manage shield belts). I see no reason to have my shooters in melee range unless something has gone terribly wrong, and I prefer for my colonists to be hyper-specialized in their combat skill of choice.
Most of my switching use for SS is between a slower longarm and a faster handgun. If I grant melee weapons to the few shooters with double passions in both combat skills (and sufficient skill) I usually equip them with knives or clubs (because again, they really shouldn't be frontline if I can help it).
Though if I had to chose between a claw or another archotech arm, I'd still pick the arm, too useful to ignore.
But yes, proper melee pawns with monoswords or zeus hammer make life MUCH easier overall as they can, rather often, kill or down pawns in their very first attack. They are also huge vs insects as doorblockers for your firing squads, and they make dealing with mechanoids, which can be very hard, much easier, most mechanoids suck in melee, and even though scythers are rather dangerous, a proper melee pawn can still reliably beat them anyway.
Like having a back-up pistol for your swordsman so he can take a few pot-shots before charging into battle or attempt to down a fleeing enemy he can't outrun or a combat knife for your machine-gunner.
Though you can remove those limitations entirely and have a guy with a whole armory of weapons on him if you want.
You can definitely use the mod in different ways, and I know it has some options you can toggle, but I think this part kind of summarizes what I mean:
This holds true for like every pawn in every situation, even dedicated melee you don't want in melee if you can help it because melee is fairly dangerous. The more damage you can do from range the less your melee has to be at risk, in an optimal battle with strong defenses and weapons you might have several melee colonists holding positions and never actually being required to engage with the enemy. Being able to give them even just a pistol more or less changes the dynamic of battle and makes it even less likely they will actually be required to melee things. Admittedly shield belts are important in some situations and kind of enforce melee for that pawn.
To put it another way, I'm doing a ranged only run currently with an ideology that hates using melee weapons. I have "frontline tank" units with good melee skill and/or tough who use the same ranged weapons as my other colonists but hold a more forward position and block anyone that gets too close. They fill basically the same role as a melee unit, but they don't use a melee weapon and contribute to fights with more dakka which means they aren't often needed to intercept anything. This "role" isn't really what "dedicated melee" is. Dedicating a pawn to melee means they often contribute nothing in a battle, this is one of the downsides of melee, that is why it is more dangerous than ranged and why you generally don't need many of them.
That is my take on it anyway.
Does either if them work with Dual-Wielding?
I'm too scared to try small mods like Dual Wield that vastly change the mechanics ( mods that are overhauls I trust have all that stuff sorted out and baked in if they are meant to be in there ).
What’s the problem you’re having with it? I haven’t used it in a while but I just used the manual setting (don’t switch based on skill), and forced them to choose weapons. I find the mods that automate apparel and weapon choices more trohble than they’re worth.
In The Great Mod Purge of 2021 I got rid of SS, but pick-up-and-haul snuck back into the mod list, and now I use that for the few pawns I want to carry EMPs or molotovs or whatever.