Gearhead RPG Wikia

GearHead has four scale factors. SF:0 represents personal-scale items. SF:1 are 'mini' mecha such as the Strongarm. SF:2 are 'full scale' mecha and are the most common type. SF:5 is used on the world map. (Note that SF:3 and SF:4 are skipped.) SF:0 and SF:1 weapon systems will be much more accurate than SF:2 weapons when fired at SF:2 mecha and will be more likely to cause critical hits, but their damage rating is much lower. SF:2 weapons are less likely to hit smaller mecha or people, but will cause huge amounts of damage when they do hit.

"While pondering what real-world quantities Gearhead's length units might map to, I've noticed some inconsistencies.


Gearhead defines an infinite number of scales, of which only SF0, SF2 and (sortof) SF5 are used for maps. Each successive scale has a 2:1 length/length ratio to the one before.
However, there are really two different scales of map that the game presents as "SF0" -- aboveground cities, and most dungeons. I can peg the ratio at 5:1 (length/length) -- this is because the ground floor of BioCorp Labs at Snake Lake occupies 10x10 grids of the Corporate Zone, yet it's basement levels mostly fill dedicated 50x50 scenes. This is a bigger jump than that officially between SF0 and SF2.
The scale of the world map is also too small. To the Look command, the distance between adjacent cells is 32 (SF5), however there is fudge code that extends this to 160 for movement rate calculations. Using this larger figure, each world map grid point represents 25,600 SF0 grids. That is not enough for a single SF2 battlefield (40,000 SF0 grids).

One could suppose that the random SF2 battlefields represent space from both the square an encounter occurs on and the bordering grid points. But then, if I am attacked by mecha besieging a city, I should be able to see the city as a 12x12 entity on the map. And some cities have associated SF2 arena battlefields and/or subsidiary aboveground SF0 scenes that are also supposedly in this space." - Michael Deutschmann

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