Ruling — AquaSphere

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You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: AquaSpherebg-159508-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Put the 6 Sectors of the Station together in any order.[1]

2. Place the Headquarters next to the Station, leaving space for the general supply.[1]

3. Each player chooses a player color and takes the wooden playing pieces of that color and a Player Board.[1]

4. Randomly determine a Starting Player.[1]

5. Shuffle the Program Cards and place 4 of them in a stack next to the Headquarters, then put the topmost Program Card back into the game box.[1]

6. Place the Programming Tiles on the appropriate spaces in the Headquarters as indicated by the topmost Program Card, then put the topmost Program Card back into the game box.[1]

7. The Starting Player places one Bot on the first space of the Play Order Track, and each other player places one Bot on the next free space of that track in clockwise order.[1]

8. Each player places one Counter on space '0' of the Knowledge Track and the other one on space '0+' of the Full Circle Counting Track.[1]

9. Each player places one Engineer on the Starting Space of the Programming Section.[1]

10. Place the Crystals, Octopods, and Time Markers next to the Station as the general supply, along with the shuffled stacks of face-down Lab Expansions and Research Cards.[1]

11. In games with 2 or 3 players, add the Submarines of the unused colors to the general supply.[1]

12. Each player places 6 Submarines on the corresponding spaces of their Player Boards.[1]

13. Each player receives 1 Base Lab placed next to their Player Board.[1]

14. Take the appropriate 4 Center Tiles according to the number of players.[2]

15. Place the tile with a 5 in its light bulb in the middle of the Station, then place the tiles with a 4, 3, and 2 on top of it in that order, each with a random orientation.[2]

16. Take the appropriate Setup Overview Card corresponding to the number of players.[2]

17. According to the Setup Overview Card, place in your Starting Sector: 1 Octopod in the purple area near the Octopod Symbol; 1 Crystal in the black area near the Crystal Symbol; the leftmost Submarine from your Player Board in the blue area on the space depicting 1 Time Marker; 1 Scientist somewhere in the blue area; and 4 Time Markers on the appropriate space in the yellow area.[2]

18. Set up other Sectors by randomly selecting one of the remaining Base Labs and placing 2 Octopods in the purple area and 1 Crystal in the black area in the Sector indicated by the letter on that tile.[2]

19. Randomly select another Base Lab and place it in the corresponding Sector with 3 Octopods in the purple area and 2 Crystals in the black area.[2]

20. In a 2-player game, place a neutral Submarine on the space depicting 1 Time Marker in the blue area of each of the remaining 2 Sectors.[2]

21. In a 3-player game, place 1 neutral Submarine on the space depicting 1 Time Marker in the blue area of the remaining Sector.[2]

22. Place 1 neutral Bot in the Loading Station of each of the 3 Sectors that are not a player's Starting Sector.[2]

23. In each Sector, draw 1 Research Card and place it face up next to the red area, and draw 1 Lab Expansion and place it face up next to the green area.[2]

24. Each player whose Starting Sector is adjacent to a “0” lock gets 3 Time Markers; all other players get 4 Time Markers.[2]

25. Determine the color of the Programming Space in the white Area of your Starting Sector and place your remaining Bot on the corresponding Program Symbol of your Player Board.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook · p.2 · 1. Game Boards (see pages 4/5 for details) · 2. Headquarters · 3. General Supply · 4. Player Boards

[2] RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook · p.3

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 76 ms · ask 7362 ms · total 7441 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7441 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "5. Station a) Center Tiles • Take the appropriate 4 Center Tiles according to the number of players (as indicated by the symbol below the light bulb). • Place the tile with a 5 in its light bulb in the middle of the Station. • Then place the tiles with a 4, 3 and 2 on top of it (in that order), each", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Put the 6 Sectors of the Station 1 together in any order. Place the Headquarters 2 next to it, but not too closely. Leave some space for the general supply 3 . Each player chooses a player color and takes the wooden playing pieces of that color and a Player Board 4 . Randomly determine a Starting Pl", "headingPath": "1. Game Boards (see pages 4/5 for details) · 2. Headquarters · 3. General Supply · 4. Player Boards", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The game is played over 4 rounds . Beginning with the Starting Player, you take turns (see below) in the order indicated by the Play Order Track until everyone has passed. Then, there is an Intermediate Scoring and the next round is prepared. The next round will be played in the order you have passe", "headingPath": "course of play: short overview · course of a turn · A: ProGrAm A BoT · B: CArry ouT An ACTion wiTH A ProGrAmmeD BoT · 1. DETERMINE WHERE TO CARRy OuT THE ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "You may only have 1 Submarine in each Sector! If you have not already placed a Submarine in the chosen Sector: Take the next Submarine from the left of your Player Board and place it on the next available Submarine Space in the Sector. Pay as many Time Markers as depicted on the space. If you cannot", "headingPath": "PLACe A SuBmArine · TAke A reSeArCH CArD · ProGrAm A BoT", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Draw 6 Research Cards from the draw pile and place one in each of the Sectors (on top of already existing Research Cards, if necessary) . Draw 6 Lab Expansions from the draw pile and place one in each of the Sectors (on top of already existing Lab Expansions, if necessary) . The topmost Center Tile ", "headingPath": "STATION · HEADquARTERS · final scoring and the end of the game · you get Knowledge Points (KP) as follows: · The player with the most Knowledge Points wins the game.", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "Welcome to the research team on the mission to AquaSphere , an underwater research station. Your task is to recover and analyze a novel kind of crystal, as well as to conduct further research. You have been granted a limited amount of time in the station. In order to succeed on your mission, you wil", "headingPath": "introduction · game idea · components", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Whenever your Counter completes a full circle around the Knowledge Track, move your Counter on this track 1 space forward. Starting Space The Programming Section consists of 7 spaces, each of which contains a Programming Tile, and the Starting Space , on which you place your Engineer at the beginnin", "headingPath": "Full Circle Counting Track · Programming Section · Station · Knowledge Track · Action Areas · Control Space · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Move the Bot from the corresponding Program Symbol to the Control Space of the Sector your Scientist is currently in. If the Control Space is occupied by another Bot, move that Bot to the Loading Station of the Sector. If the number of Bots in the Loading Station now exceeds the permitted number, ea", "headingPath": "2. PLACE THE BOT · 3. CARRy OuT THE ACTION · C: PASS", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Game Boards (see pages 4/5 for details) · 2. Headquarters · 3. General Supply · 4. Player Boards", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 667}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 667 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 667 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row retained until: Nov 11, 2026 08:04

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)		p.3	0.048652 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	1. Game Boards (see pages 4/5 for details) · 2. Headquarters · 3. General Supply · 4. Player Boards	p.2	0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	course of play: short overview · course of a turn · A: ProGrAm A BoT · B: CArry ouT An ACTion wiTH A ProGrAmmeD BoT · 1. DETERMINE WHERE TO CARRy OuT THE ACTION	p.6	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	PLACe A SuBmArine · TAke A reSeArCH CArD · ProGrAm A BoT	p.9	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	STATION · HEADquARTERS · final scoring and the end of the game · you get Knowledge Points (KP) as follows: · The player with the most Knowledge Points wins the game.	p.11	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	introduction · game idea · components	p.1	0.030622 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	Full Circle Counting Track · Programming Section · Station · Knowledge Track · Action Areas · Control Space · …	p.4	0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	2. PLACE THE BOT · 3. CARRy OuT THE ACTION · C: PASS	p.7	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 13 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)		p.3	#1	0.048652 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	course of play: short overview · course of a turn · A: ProGrAm A BoT · B: CArry ouT An ACTion wiTH A ProGrAmmeD BoT · 1. DETERMINE WHERE TO CARRy OuT THE ACTION	p.6	#3	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	PLACe A SuBmArine · TAke A reSeArCH CArD · ProGrAm A BoT	p.9	#4	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	2. PLACE THE BOT · 3. CARRy OuT THE ACTION · C: PASS	p.7	#8	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	exPAnD THe LAB · TAke Time mArkerS · TAke CrySTALS · CATCH oCToPoDS	p.8	#9	0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	introduction · game idea · components	p.1	#6	0.030622 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	STATION · HEADquARTERS · final scoring and the end of the game · you get Knowledge Points (KP) as follows: · The player with the most Knowledge Points wins the game.	p.11	#5	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	1. Game Boards (see pages 4/5 for details) · 2. Headquarters · 3. General Supply · 4. Player Boards	p.2	#2	0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)	1. Game Boards (see pages 4/5 for details) · 2. Headquarters · 3. General Supply · 4. Player Boards	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK AquaSphere — Rulebook (corpus doc 667)		p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 76 ms · first delta 1630 ms · total 7441 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 76 ms · ask 7362 ms · gateway work 7441 ms · total 7441 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4063
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 860
tok/sec: 150.2 tok/sec — 860 output tokens in 5.726 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 7s ago)
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 600), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.