How bout sharps rifle breechloaders as an upgrade weapon that the huntsmen can take.
How would that make sense? Fluffwise?
They do have repeating weapons...
Well it would make sense this way, the engineers are tinkerers correct, and they are presented with the problem of how do we make a better firearm, same as our RW engineers. So in the continuous quest of improving the state troopers hand gun, some will surely have concluded that while it might be nice to be able to hide behind a tree or convenient fallen log the muzzle loading smooth bore is very slow to reload. So how do we devise a breech loading method that goes quicker?
Enter the cam locking, falling breech block, rifle bored, Scharf shutzenbuchse of some named engineer yadda yadda. This handgun type is very certianly simple enough for the makers of a repeater hand gun, as it is literally what it says. A simple lever which acts also as a trigger guard is lowered, this in turn unlocks a cam locked breech block lowering it into the stock of the weapon. The rear of the firearm can then be charged by thumbing a pre-packed paper package of a bullet on top of a load of powder, into the breech. The lever is then simply raised, locking the breech into place ready for firing, a primer charge of powder in the gun lock, and bang. The gunlock for this weapon can even still be as simple as the matchlocks modeled on the current plastics or with a bit of engineery tech might even be as fancy as a flintlock or fulminating caplock. Like the alchemists in the lore of metal can't share a bit of that chemistry with the engineering guild, or figure it out for themselves.
Oh and as for the rifle boring, well the HLR has it why wouldn't they put it into a new weapon designed specifically for skirmishers.
I mean if a steam tank, which really is a steam engine or tractor that has been armoured for use in a hostile environment can be invented and used then certainly a simple cam closing the end of a pipe can be devised.
when it boils down to it all firearms are essentially air guns, think about it. What did YOU think pushed the bullet down the barrel fast enough to hurt someone a long ways away. How those expanding gasses are stored on the other hand, chemical, mechanical, or pneumo is another question.
Hey I haven't even touched the idea yet of Minie' ball bullets yet and what they did for the rate of fire and effective range of firearms.
