Hey, don't offend Laser Rifles! First, they are a valuable source of income (second only to Light Alloys + Personal Armors production, but that requires 2 components and is also messy), and do not require any ammunition, firing endlessly.
My every soldier carried an obligatory Laser Rifle in his backpack, taking it out and firing it every chance he had, achieving 3 objectives at once:
- the more stuff you carry, the faster strength and TUs of a soldier grow
- he always has a backup weapon with infinite ammo and decent damage
- everytime your other units are searching for that last alien, you must choose some barn or cabbage and SHOOT at it at full auto, RAPIDLY rising shooting accuracy.
In addition to laser rifles my commandoes always carry autocannons with HE or Incendiary ammo, creating havoc every time they can and scaring enemy to death. Later you can replace autocannons with Heavy Plasmas and those Blaster Launchers, but before that, it's the best way for heavy loading soldiers.
The only downside to this is somewhat reduced TU count in the beginning, and you also have to set up the gear for every mission, which is a drag. Unfortunately, original XCom doesn't have loadout templates.