The book seems to do two things well.

1: Standard kit so your characters can always have some basic gear.
2: Very clear rules for getting completely new gear.

Anything that falls outside of the above two things is left almost completely to the GM.

If the book does Universal Standard Kit "well"…

Can you tell me where to find descriptions and weights for those items?

I can't find it…

 And they wouldn't list the basic equipment in character generation and then NOT have those items in the Armoury…

Would they?

Surely that would qualify as a HUGE GAPING HOLE in the book.

Well I may be mis understanding what you mean by Kit but if you are talking about stuff like "1 Uniform (field), 1 set of Poor weather gear. etc" I think the reason they left much of the details on such things out is that they are pretty unimportant and unlikely to come up in game play in any meaningful way. Also most of the items I saw were pretty self explanitory, I mean a basic tool kit in all likely hood has a hammer, a wrench, some wire clippers, and that regiments homeworlds version of the Omni Tool and if they are truly blessed by the Machine, Duct Tape, WD-40, and Bondo ( These items ,Which every tech Priest worth his Cog knows, can fix damn near anything). So to sum up Most of the stuff in the standard kit simply did not merit page space due to being unimportant/self explanitory. Now as for the  Question at hand the way i see Specialist equipment is that this is the stuff they give you once you get out of basic (So your a heavy? Here is your flamer…don't lose it!) and may not be part of the standard load out for the Regiment as a whole (would you trust most of these guys with a Flamer?) so there for if said Item gets lost or damaged or eaten by a Squig it is a little harder to get a new one hence the need for a roll.

My personal solution to the hellgun/hot-shot lasgun thing was simply to treat it as a complex battery/charge pack change, whith the pack amplifying/modifying the output for consistent performance. I've been following that issue since DH, and between that, and looking up Storm Trooper fluff (three wikis, two codeces, and the Munitorum manual), that's likely the easiest explanation.

Where does it say that Hellguns (the whole Hot-Shot Lasgun sounds stupid, and always will. Stupid 2nd Ed terminology) can take the normal charge packs that lasguns to? Because even if so, they certainly shouldn't provide the same amount of shots.

Way back in Dark Heresy the Voss-Pattern had that option at a quarter capacity. 1d10+4 pen 4 I believe, though, for that gun. Pretty close to today's Overload settings in performance but at least it wasn't unreliable.

And that's it. Far as I know it never was mentioned again.

The 10kg pack the Type XIV has is good for 200, not 30 shots, depending on how well maintained it is and its power settings. That's a massive difference with what we have in the weapon tables, albeit still far less weight-efficient than carrying three and one third charge packs for a lasgun. It also implies they're variable in some way and that perhaps quality should affect ammo use in energy weapons.

Blood Pact said:

A houserule solution to the backback ammo supply conundrum would be to say that it carries 20 kg worth of ammo (the other 5kg being electrical feeds/ammo belts/whatever). You could calculate this based on a magazine having 10% of the mass of the weapon, which I think is stated somewhere in the rules.

So, for a 55kg lascannon, this would be 5.5 kg for a charge pack. Its charge packs have 5 shots, or 1.1 kg a shot, so it could hold 18 shots. That seems reasonable; it's more than normal but not inexhaustible. To some extent, this is helped by the fact that more damaging weapons seem to be heavier, even when they appear to be similar sizes.

The potential problem with this is that for a 5kg weapon like a lasgun, this is 40 magazines, or twenty-four hundred shots - almost as much capacity as a handgun in an action movie. But, you'd achieve a similar effect (and a similar weight) if you just had a huge satchel full of charge packs (except for reloading times), and I'm not sure that a lasgun with almost inexhaustible ammo is really that game-breaking.

Given the backpack is probably built for a specific type of ammunition [or at the very least you can't stuff a flamer-fuel pack full of bullets] its probably perfectly fine if one's willing to obtain it for their lasgun instead of getting, say, a better weapon. 2400 lasgun shots is incredible… but its still lasgun shots*.

Although if that thing blows, that's gotta be spectacular.

Probably all works out better with 15kg backpacks anyways: 13 lascannon shots or 1995 lasgun shots.

Now imagine the horrible troubled regiment feeding all ten lasguns from one pack, cables all leading to the carrier…

Edit: given the lasgun's 4kg we're actually looking at 62.5 magazines worth: that's 3750 shots, 3333 for a triplex or long-las, or a whopping 4285 bullpup lasgun shots. A multilaser would be looking at 100/3.5*25 or 714 shots per 25kg backpack…

Perhaps a basic ammo weight per category and type would be better suited to by-weight backpacking…

Kiton said:

With maths like this it is clear that the backpack ammo option is just broken as it currently stands and needs to be replaced with a backpack that lists shots not just per type of weapon (las, sp etc) but also class of weapon (las pistol, sp basic etc) and have variable weights dependant on the weapon in question - backpacks for pistols may only hold 5 or 6 clips but wouldn't weight al that much, whereas a backpack for a heavy stubber or meltagun would.

It might take up more space but considering it'd only be added in an errata at this stage it's not like FFG have printing space and costs to consider…

Lord Steel said:

The same items, or very similar items, can be found on Pages182-183 of the Inquisitor's Handbook. 

Are you seriously suggesting that the items which make up an Infantryman's basic gear are worthy of descriptions and weights in a game about the Inquisition, but are somehow less important in a game that is actually about the Imperial Guard?

Seriously?

Well I found an answer to at least one of my original questions.

Specialist equipment is NOT part of the standard regimental standard kit and ammo for and replacements for specialist equipment must be aquired through logistics.

Page 161 under Logistics, fourth paragraph.
"For game purposes, any equipment—whether acquired through legitimate or underhanded means—apart from the standard kit falls under the umbrella of the Logistics system. This includes gear issued to specialists as well as equipment specific to a mission…"

Edit: After doing some thinking I believe that ammo for specialist weapons should be included in mission assignment gear. This should ensure it's available the majority of the time.

Droma said:

Oh, GOOD SPOT !

Although… I personally completely and ferociously disagree with specialists having to use the logistics system to replace what for them should be standard equipment.

So… While you have found the paragraph that proves the game's writers intended otherwise, I'll still be counting the specialists' equipment as standard issue and allowing them to replace/replenish it as normal. 

'Cause I'm a nice GM :)

Savage said:

Well short answer is ….Pretty Much., Long Answer is that I can see why in a the Inquistion Game this is the case both from a story view and a buisness view. in the story view these items could be vitally important for some disguise, or as evidence and also the a normal Inquistorial agent actually has a bit more time to worry about these things where as a IG grunt is either in a state of Bordom and not paying attention to the bits and bobs of his kit (till inspection time that is then he panics) or in  state of getting shot at and there for REALLY not caring about his kit (his CLIPS however…). i do know that this is a bit of a stretch but it make sense. Buisness view is that FF placed all this stuff down in the Hand book which came out before most of the other settings I think and then saw that most folks didn't bother over much with these items and figured that in future products these items could be glossed over and they could save some money on printing costs, Per unit these saving are not much but in bulk I am sure that this could add up to a nice chunk of change.

Savage said:

Also, keep in mind that Inquisitor's Handbook is a splatbook not a core rulebook. Almost 70% (give or take) is devoted to equipment stats and descriptions because the rules are already described in DH core rules. When Hammer of the Emperor comes out I guess there will be tons of fluff descriptions there that couldnt fit in the core rules.