[@Klomster] Part of my problem, I think, is that even if I went with a hyped-up lasgun, it's still going to require a great deal of servicing, as all heavy-end lasguns do. The barrels wear out quickly, the cartridges tend to over charge, the power packs wear out faster if you use the highest settings, etc.

If I go with a solid-shot gun, though, I have to keep stocked in ammunition. Bolter-class ammunition would be massively expensive, bulky, heavy, and very hard to come by. However, bolter rounds also represent some of the best quality fire power in the Imperium. Their stopping power is ridicules, and massively undersold on the table top. My point being, anything roughly on par with that, performance wise, is going to have the same issues, but be even more hard to come by.

Which is why I wanted the rail rifle. Their standard clips hold over a hundred rounds, so just two of them would last him years. The main issue is maintenance, but surely he could use his connections to get those while he's in the area he got it from. Beyond that, he'd have about 5 power cells, so his maximum shot count at any one time would be fairly low, but still good enough to give him options. The big thing would be finding someone who can make it Vastly easier to charge the batteries back up, as opposed to leaving them on the imperial-to-tau converter plug he could have gotten from rogue traders who live on/around Tau worlds.