It's a single-shot laser rifle, meaning slow rate of fire but high damage; think hunting rifle, but laser. As such, I imagine headshots with that thing will be lethal.

Especially if ya do like Preston and put a scope and a beam focus on it.

Probably because the raiders were low-level, if that's how the rubberbranding system works anyway.

A bow with spinning arrows, that does frost damage and staggers the....oh, sorry. Probably whatver pistol drops and is better than what I have until a sniper rifle comes along.

I hope to find an assault rifle.

I'm gonna save my bullets and pistol whip baddies to death.

Yep, a weapon that pretty much incinerated enemies in one hit is useless.

I've never been a big fan of most of the fully auto guns in Fallout, mainly because of the price of ammunition. However, in 3 at least, I always had a Chinese assault rifle on me, so I predict I'll have at least one automatic rifle on me at some point. Early game, though, it'll probably be a single shot rifle and/or a pistol of significant caliber.

My first character usually favors Energy Weapons. In Fallout 3, I liked to get Protectron's Gaze early on. In New Vegas, I tried to find a scope for the Laser Rifles you find in Nipton. So for Fallout 4, I'm probably going to go for a fully automatic laser shotgun.

MAH BARE FISTS. Or, something to put over my fists, being as they are just made of flesh and not say, steel.

As for my second playthrough I will drop everything into charisma and endurance and do a pacifist run like its undertale or something.

0. Sneak
1. I'm a deadly weapon. Er, I mean, my hands.
2. 10mm pistol
3. Silenced sniper rifle asap.

O.P. here. Perfectly said. Two weapons I know for a fact I'll be using most of the game are shotgun and sniper. But early game I'll be sneaking around scavenging and the shotgun will be my weapon of choice because most of the trouble I get in will be in enclosed spaces inside buildings. If I carry only one weapon I can bring more "junk" back to my base. If I put my early perks in to being a badass with a hunting shotgun I've got short and medium distances covered with one weapon. I'll worry about sniper and marksman skills later in the game when I need or want them for quests.

As Phoss mentions, it might be a very good idea to use melee in the beginning so to save up on ammo.