It would probably be fascinating to pick at the physical laws(or try to concoct maximum-plausibility ones) for a world where ‘steampunkish’ actually worked well enough to be a viable tech level.
Yes, it’s pretty clearly the case that much ‘steampunk’ is what it is because it is produced by people with very limited mechanical engineering knowledge or access to machine tools; but there is also the difficulty of much of ‘steampunk’ simply not being a thing even the good Mr. Watt could coax physics into allowing.
