The year is 2328 and the human race has spread itself out across the solar system. Climate change led to a rise in sea-level that left most of the countries of Earth beneath water. Originally cities dealt with this by building upwards and soon every major city on the planet towered into the clouds, however there wasn't enough room for everyone. All available funding was poured into space travel and terraforming technologies in the hopes that this would hold the key to housing the growing population. Mars was the first planet to be successfully terraformed and colonised. Mercury and then Venus followed a few years later. In the intervening years space stations were built by various planetary governments and corporations and became essentially floating cities with their own native populations. Mars became especially rich due to large deposits of minerals that allowed its economy to boom in its early years and it slowly began to rival Earth's economy. The populations of Mars and Earth began to view each other with suspicion, each considering itself to be the main power in the solar system.
Suspicion erupted into full scale war when Mars, angered by trade limitations placed on it by Earth, attacked an Earth convoy and seized its cargo. Both sides mobilised their armed forces and began buying militarised spacecraft that were still in their infancy at this time. Most of the fighting was done on or around the space stations between Earth and Mars. During the course of the war there were atrocities committed by both sides on the civilian populations of the space stations that lay between the two planets. Mars adopted a policy whereby every citizen of an occupied space station would have to either join their army or, if they were unable or unwilling, were put into work camps in the factories or mining operations on Mars itself. Many were worked to death or killed while in these camps while their homes were occupied by soldiers and destroyed during the fighting.
Eventually Earth defeated Mars and forced them to accept an unconditional surrender which forced them into disarmament and forced them to pay massive subsidies to Earth. This war went by a number of names after its end, the most common of which was “The Supremacy War” although the Earth government officially labelled it the “War of Martian Aggression”. Mars was forced to use many of their resources to settle the people they had forcibly put into work camps on the new colonies on Venus. This peace only lasted a few years as Mars, who were chafing under the harsh sanctions put on their military and economy, began rebuilding its armed forces. War broke out again between Mars and Earth, this time Mars sent a pre-emptive strike against the fledgling colonies on Venus as they expected that they would join Earth. They fire-bombed several cities and bombarded military structures from space before Earth could mobilise its forces to prevent further damage to Venus' civilian population.
This attack by Mars had the opposite effect as Venus had initially intended to stay neutral in the conflict; however this spurred many of its inhabitants to volunteer to fight alongside Earth. The war lasted for 5 years and was brutal in its intensity. Many space stations and cities were destroyed but eventually Mars was defeated again. This time Earth adopted a more lenient approach, the demanded surrender but did not force Mars to pay subsidies and they aided in rebuilding efforts for their destroyed cities. Many of the people from Venus saw this as a betrayal by Earth as they were given very little help from outside sources to rebuild their own damaged cities. However, peace followed and there have been no further armed conflicts except those between private corporations that are usually small-scale and based around mining operations or other sources of wealth.
After the war, which is usually called the “Second Supremacy War” while the original war was referred to as the “First Supremacy war” although it is sometimes referred to as “The Betrayal” by the surviving fighters from Venus; the Solar System experienced an economic depression that led to most governments having to reduce spending in all areas. Mass unemployment and homelessness became common and cities became massively overpopulated. Crime is rampant and the various planetary governments are struggling to cope, most cities and planets are hiring bounty hunters and freelance detectives to deal with criminals. This is done by a process of posting "bounty lists" on cities' computer networks, these are then updated and changed by the cities' police force as and when bounties are handed in.
Private companies have begun to fund their own terraforming and colonial efforts on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. To facilitate this they have developed hyperspace gates that allow faster than light travel, they have also installed these between various colonised planets (Mars, Venus etc) to allow quick travel between them. These private colonisation enterprises are mostly based around mineral mines or sources of useful chemicals and the main settlers involved are workers at these locations.
Technology:
Space travel is relatively common place, many people own personal spacecraft. There are many different makes and models of spacecraft that vary in quality, size and function. The most common type of spacecraft to be seen are medium to large sized cargo vessels used for shipping almost everything imaginable that could be of any use to a settlement, both legal and illegal. Many of these cargo ships have been converted for various purposes, such as transport ships for passengers. Smaller personal craft are often present around space stations and planets; these are typically about the size of a World War 2 era fighter plane. These smaller craft have no auto-pilot features that the larger crafts have, they must be manually flown at all times. Most pre-war craft do not have weapons on them, except for some early military prototypes, older models often had weapons added to them during the war and the practice is still common. Models built after the start of the war are almost entirely armed in some way, usually with heavy-calibre machine guns or flak-cannons though some ships use self-propelled missiles or EMP weapons that can wipe out electrical circuits in ships. Larger ships have built in impact dampener shields that, while not entirely eliminating the damage done by weapons and other impacts, reduce significantly the damage done to the hull of the ship.
Laser weapon technologies are in their infancy and have been used on some experimental military spacecraft. Militaries are the owners and developers of the most advanced spacecraft in, Earth especially has an impressive armada, having kept all of its top ships from during the war and selling or decommissioning the rest, however it is only able to operate in the immediate vicinity of Earth otherwise it would easily outstretch itself. Supply chains have been significantly reduced since the end of the Second Supremacy War.
Personal weaponry has not changed much in terms of small arms, guns are still bullet based and come in all shapes and sizes. Ballistic vests and other bullet protection have changed some; bulletproof vests are much less bulky with the discovery and development of new alloys using metals from colonised planets. There are ammunition types that can pierce these types of protection of course but for average bullets they remain effective.
Robotics technology has come a long way and there are androids and robots of all kinds present in the solar system. Some are basic utility models that are very machine like, typically referred to as “bots”, while some others are designed to look like humans typically called “droids” or “andys”, the earlier models are noticeably non-human but over time it's become harder and harder to tell the androids from humans. These androids are used mainly as servants and assistants of various kinds. Occasionally the artificial intelligence in these machines will malfunction and they are known to develop levels of sentience and attempt to escape and they can sometimes be found working in criminal syndicates as hit men or thugs as well as some who have escaped their masters and attempt to live their lives out in peace. Normal civilians do not tolerate rogue androids and escaped androids are hunted and either decommissioned or have their memories erased and rewritten then given back to their owners. A bi-product of the advances in robotics technology is the development of functional robotic limbs and organs that can replace missing limbs in humans; it is not rare to see people with replacement legs, arms and sometimes other organs such as eyes.
