HELP! Too many choices and need assistance with purchase please. My head hurts.

FX ROYALE 500 (.25) or FX BOSS (.30)! Out of box perfection, no tinkering, incredibly little maintenance, power to do what you asked for, etc. Traditional rifle style. Just look at posts from owners. You'll see over & over "Best platform FX ever made". Phenomenal accuracy, virtually trouble free.

Agree 100% with the Royale/Boss platform being the best thing FX has made. But I'm not sure the Royale 500 has quite the power requested. If so, then yes, I'd recommend it along with the Veteran. I have both a Royale and a Veteran, and those are two rifles I trust to work everytime, something I cannot say from my experience with other FX products. 
 
All 3 of my 177, 22 and 25 Taipan Veterans are the shortys and would highly recommend them. I did not feel any need to buy duplicates for spares for these specific guns like I did for all my duplicate and triplicate Taipan Mutants which have all been proven to be reliable and trouble free so I just set them doubles and triples all for different power levels.

My Kaliburgun Cricket shortys with skeleton stock feels lighter though. Another good recommendation with higher capacity magazines and looks a little more appealing to the eyes IMHO.

The Cricket wood stocks look pretty decent and I like the forestock. My Taipan VL stock has been polished extensively with Trewax and that improved it a LOT.