I'd like a really suave firearm for my smooth talking character, Suave Mcdermot. He looks a bit ungainly striding around the wastes with shotgun strapped to his back. I currently have 12 caps, but rising fast!

I won't have the lock pick skill to get lucky. This includes DLC too, preferably something from the GRA really.

The .44 Magnum, or .357 Magnum are really good pistols that are low level so if you only have 12 caps, they should be easy for you.

But my favorite pistol is the 12.7mm Pistol.

A Light Shining in Darkness or Lil Devil, have to save up to get the latter though.

If you want a suave looking pistol then I reccomend Maria, Bennys pistol. Otherwise I like That Gun. Or Light Shining in the Darkness.

Sorry! I meant to say i have 12,000 caps. I found a load of combat armour at the Nellis air base.

Completely subjective.

Hand Loader ammo? Lil Devil or That Gun. (preference)
Cowboy, Hand Loader ammo and a decent reload speed and crit rate? Lucky
Cowboy and none of the rest? Ranger Sequoia
Grunt and maybe Hand Loader? A Light Shining in the Darkness.

Lots of factors play into these such as spread, crit rate, crit damage, DPS, ammo types available etc. For instance, Lucky and Cowboy have the best accuracy, Lil Devil and That Gun have the most versatile ammo types and ALSID (A Light blah blah blah) has the highest DPS and Lucky, ALSID and That Gun are the most crit-friendly.

That gun is good? Like did I miss something here? Honestly???

It was a waste of money, only 5 shots per clip, god awful in vats, takes a buttload of money to repair.

Someone enlighten me on this please

Well that's preference. If you don't like it, opt for Lucky, if you have the Cowboy perk. Much easier to repair (ridiculously cheap to repair infact), more accurate, 6 shots per clip.
Someone once tried arguing to me that That Gun is superior to Lucky in every way, but for some of the reasons you mentioned (and more), I personally would take Lucky over it any day. One extra bullet doesn't seem like much, but for a pistol, which typically has "meh" damage anyways, it matters. Also if you have rapid reload and good accuracy, the reload of Lucky becomes a non-issue compared to That Gun. I actually recently calculated out the reload speed and realized that my character takes 2 seconds to reload That Gun, 3 to reload Lucky...expect I can stop Lucky mid-reload sequence if I'm in a dire situation, and if I reload it at 2 seconds in I'll still have four bullets: only one less than That Gun, which btw I'd spend more time reloading anyways because of 5 bullet clip size.

Others prefer a hard-hitter like the Ranger Sequoia and a lot of people prefer ALSID's per speed.

On my first playthrough after getting the Ultimate Edition and currently using the weathered 10mm pistol from Courier's Stash. Keeping it topped up with ammo's a problem though but it seems great to start with (lots of people will probably tell me not).

You paid for the gun? You pay to have items repaired? I'm genuinely surprised by that.

Anyway I'm not a huge fan of it either, but I do admit that it does have some attractive qualities. It's crit chance is tied with Lucky's and the only one-handed Gun that has a higher one is the Silenced .22. It is also the only pistol with Armoured Piercing Rounds and with GRA and the Hand Loader perk it can also get Match rounds which lower its spread. Like I said, I'm not a huge fan of it, but I can understand why others are.

Get the ranger sequoia dude. Mine does 93 damage and it looks good:)

I bought lil' Devil today and it was money very well spent. The thing really does some damage!

Part of the reason I chose Lucky over That Gun though is, you need to ask yourself what a pistol is for.

If you see a deathclaw off in the distance, are you reaching for your sidearm? [censored] no, that's suicide. You'd reach for your rifle. So then what's the point of having a pistol at all if your rifle does it better?
To be economical, that's why. When I went into Old World Blues, I brought tons of ammo for my Brush Gun, Assault Carbine, Lucky and Gobi Sniper, but by the time I left? Hell, I used the LAER in the room with the giant Giant Roboscorpion to defeat it. I was out of ammo in EVERYTHING except Lucky, and by the time I got there I'd conserved about 18 Brush Gun shots for the Giant Roboscorpion. Obviously they weren't enough and I had to pick up the LAER to finish the job (Lucky could've done it too, but again I was being economical. The LAER has higher damage and can do the job better, and if it breaks after this fight? So what? I need LUCKY to be able to make it back to the Sink more than I do the LAER, which is not at all reliable in the long run). But even being able to survive up until that point? That, I owe to Lucky. Lucky was there to get easy kills to help conserve on ammo for the hard hitters for the tough battles, and Lucky was the only gun I could rely on when ammo started to run low, as .357 rounds are such a common, lightweight easy-to-make round and Lucky is so cheap and easy to repair that it was the ONLY gun that wasn't breaking (costs of repair in the Big Empty can be VERY expensive; yes I know now you should take repair kits with you, but I went in there blind) and the ONLY one I always had ammo for. I can't tell you how many times I had to kill a Nightstalker pack with Lucky, and how many times being able to interrupt the loading sequence of it actually saved my ass. (yes, I actually ran into several instances where I needed ONE bullet, and being able to stop after reloading one bullet probably saved my life)

Personally, I sort of have to scoff when That Gun fans say "I can pierce armor, Lucky can't." Yeah that's great and all, but why would you? Why would you ever use That Gun to take down a BoS Paladin or a Deathclaw? You have a rifle for that; use it!

A sidearm is just that; a SIDEarm, meaning it's not your primary weapon to rely on. To me, Lucky serves that purpose best. All the other pistols, to me, feel like wannabe primary weapons, which while they may feel cool in your hands, aren't actually wise as sidearm choices. (Ranger Sequoia, ALSID imo, both because they have repair issues and/or ammo issues)
But yeah, like I said, some people would also scoff at my use of Lucky and say ALSID or Lil' Devil is better. There's plenty of differing opinions on this, and as I said, part of it depends on your character's build. Low agility or Luck characters for example will definitely wanna avoid Lucky.

Silenced .22 with high critical built character is quite fun to use. High sneak and you can clear rooms with no one ever standing a chance or noticing your even there. It's my favorite pistol until I can get a fully modded .45 auto which I'll also carry for those tougher enemies. I've taken the silenced .22 into HH and had no problems.

^

My personal favorites are the police revolver for acuracy, the 5.56mm revolver the black finish makes it look cooler than that gun IMO, and the 10mm pistol because it will never let you down.

5.56mm pistol
Imight be biased because i LOVE the .223 pistol in the originals

Or the 12.7mm pistol
Because i love the noise it makes (thats why i keep a silenced and a unsillenced version of it)

i'm in the lil devil and light shining in darkness camp.

LSID looks great, shoots fast, reloads fast, does nice damage, and with super (hand load) rounds it hits with authority. once i get LSID, it never leaves my inventory.

lil devil is....well, a lil devil lol. plus i like the added bonus of carrying survivalists rifle and only having to to haul around one ammo type (very useful for hardcoe mode).

i have to give honorable mention to the police pistol and weathered 10mm. and a modded 9mm surprised me as it is really good as well. just don't use it on anything with armor.

The best pistol is probably a tie between the Ranger Sequoia and the A Light Shining in the Darkness, I'd go with the latter because the ammo is much more common. None of those guns beat the Survivorlist rifle or GRA Anti-Material Rifle.

that gun, what an amazing gun.

I didn't really like 'That gun' too much. It felt quite weak.

the Weathered 10MM Pistol is actually good for starting out, cheap ammo and easy to repair. Keep a .357 magnum and eventually a .44 magnum on you too once you get high enough gun skill. The 357 and 44 are great with the hand loaded ammo and all the weapon mods.

well it works very good with the cowboy perk, but if you ain't felling for it then i think that you might enjoy a customized .44 revolver

I never got this, why wouldn't you in this case just only carry the survivailist rifle? there both semi auto and the SR is alround just better.