Fluff will come... I don't think I will do much except a remotetly generic background...
Victorians develop technology and spaceflight, super technology and remenants of an acient civilisation found throughout solar system, great empires in race to expand their holding in the new frontier, friction rises and conflict erupts.
However, here is the start of conceptual thinking.
Victorian Science Fiction (VSF) tends to rely on a foundatin set in history supplimented with the extraordinary. From the historical point of view there is a 'muddying' of technology from the mid 19th century through to WW1.
The technology of each force was very similar during this period with developments just about in parallel. Therefore each army will have a base of similar weapons, effectively identicle in game terms.
Rifles: during the period there were two main rifles. These are described as the single action and repeating rifle.
The single action rifle relied upon the bolt opening the breach, a single bullet being loaded and the breach being closed. Post firing the breach was opened again ejecting the spent cartridge. They still employed a black powder cartridge and a heavy 0.45" to 0.5" soft lead bullet. These guns were favoured right up until the turn of the century, often above the more modern repeating guns because of their stopping power.
Repeating rifles first came into service in the 1880s. These are the bolt action rifles such as the Lee-Enfield that most of us are familiar with and were heavily used in both the world wars. They have a strip of usually 8-10 bullets loaded into the gun and each action of the bolt clears a cartridge and loads the next bullet into place. They were typically around 0.3" and used the new smokeless cordite as a charge. They were more accurate than the single action and faster to fire but had poorer stopping power until improvements in bullet velocity made hydrostatic shock dominant in bullet performance.
