Ruling — Space Base

You asked

What needs to be placed on the table before the first round begins?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Space Basebg-242302-en-1e

I looked through Space Base's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook · p.28 · LIGHT-SPEED VARIANT NOT RECOMMENDED FOR YOUR FIRST GAME!

This is an optional variant for those who want to essentially skip through the first few turns of the game and get into the middle of the game faster. Playing with this variant will reduce the average length of the game. NOTE : These are not the 'standard' rules, but rather a variant. Before the gam

RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook · p.10 · TIMING RESTRICTIONS OF ABILITIES: · 1. COMMAND CONSOLES · 2. COLONY CARDS · 3. THE SHIPYARD · 4. CHARGE TOKENS · 5. DETERMINE STARTING PLAYER

10 Each player takes the following: 1 command console 1 set of 12 starting ships (cards belonging to a specific set are denoted by their card back) 1 counter (cube) for each track: 1 , 1 , and 1 Each player should place their console in front of them. They place the and counters on the 0 (zero) spac

RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook · p.26

26 SET DICE These abilities can be used only during phase 2 (“roll”) of your own turn (see page 12). This must be used before you roll the dice. Instead of rolling a die, you choose which result to place it on. For example, instead of rolling a die you may place it so the ‘6’ result is used. Further

RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook · p.26 · SET DICE · EXCHANGE THIS CARD WITH ANY OTHER CARD ON YOUR BOARD · YOU WIN!

These abilities can be used only during phase 2 ('roll') of your own turn (see page 12). This must be used before you roll the dice. Instead of rolling a die, you choose which result to place it on. For example, instead of rolling a die you may place it so the '6' result is used. Further, if you had

RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook · p.16 · END OF THE GAME

When any player reaches at least 40 , it triggers the end of the game, even if this happens on another player's turn. Finish playing the current round so that each player gets an equal number of turns, then the game ends. This means the player sitting to the right of the starting player will take th

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 84 ms · ask 5638 ms · total 5723 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 5723 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 28, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "This is an optional variant for those who want to essentially skip through the first few turns of the game and get into the middle of the game faster. Playing with this variant will reduce the average length of the game. NOTE : These are not the 'standard' rules, but rather a variant. Before the gam", "headingPath": "LIGHT-SPEED VARIANT NOT RECOMMENDED FOR YOUR FIRST GAME!", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "10 Each player takes the following: 1 command console 1 set of 12 starting ships (cards belonging to a specific set are denoted by their card back) 1 counter (cube) for each track: 1 , 1 , and 1 Each player should place their console in front of them. They place the and counters on the 0 (zero) spac", "headingPath": "TIMING RESTRICTIONS OF ABILITIES: · 1. COMMAND CONSOLES · 2. COLONY CARDS · 3. THE SHIPYARD · 4. CHARGE TOKENS · 5. DETERMINE STARTING PLAYER", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "26 SET DICE These abilities can be used only during phase 2 (“roll”) of your own turn (see page 12). This must be used before you roll the dice. Instead of rolling a die, you choose which result to place it on. For example, instead of rolling a die you may place it so the ‘6’ result is used. Further", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "These abilities can be used only during phase 2 ('roll') of your own turn (see page 12). This must be used before you roll the dice. Instead of rolling a die, you choose which result to place it on. For example, instead of rolling a die you may place it so the '6' result is used. Further, if you had", "headingPath": "SET DICE · EXCHANGE THIS CARD WITH ANY OTHER CARD ON YOUR BOARD · YOU WIN!", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "When any player reaches at least 40 , it triggers the end of the game, even if this happens on another player's turn. Finish playing the current round so that each player gets an equal number of turns, then the game ends. This means the player sitting to the right of the starting player will take th", "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "5. FIRST PLAYER TOKEN 11", "headingPath": "5. DETERMINE STARTING PLAYER · 4. CHARGE TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Some abilities require just one in order to use them, and will show a single colored square. Some ability cards may hold multiple , but only need 1 to use the ability. These colored squares do not have connectors linking them. In these cases you may have multiple on a card, but you only need to spen", "headingPath": "ABILITY CARDS IN DETAIL", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "These abilities can be used only during phase 2 ('roll') of your own turn (see page 12). Rerolling one or both dice affects all players. When a player is considering using this ability, they should warn the other players, so they do not gain rewards using the wrong dice results. These abilities can ", "headingPath": "REROLL DICE · ALL PLAYERS LOSE 4 · PLACE ONE CHARGE ANYWHERE · PLACE A CARD ON ANY 7-12 SECTOR", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 375 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 375 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

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 12, 2026 21:07

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 Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	LIGHT-SPEED VARIANT NOT RECOMMENDED FOR YOUR FIRST GAME!	p.28	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
#2	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	TIMING RESTRICTIONS OF ABILITIES: · 1. COMMAND CONSOLES · 2. COLONY CARDS · 3. THE SHIPYARD · 4. CHARGE TOKENS · 5. DETERMINE STARTING PLAYER	p.10	0.032258 (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 Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)		p.26	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 Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	SET DICE · EXCHANGE THIS CARD WITH ANY OTHER CARD ON YOUR BOARD · YOU WIN!	p.26	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 Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	END OF THE GAME	p.16	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 Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	5. DETERMINE STARTING PLAYER · 4. CHARGE TOKENS	p.11	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))	24
#7	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	ABILITY CARDS IN DETAIL	p.21	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
#8	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	REROLL DICE · ALL PLAYERS LOSE 4 · PLACE ONE CHARGE ANYWHERE · PLACE A CARD ON ANY 7-12 SECTOR	p.25	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))	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 80 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 Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	END OF THE GAME	p.16	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	SET DICE · EXCHANGE THIS CARD WITH ANY OTHER CARD ON YOUR BOARD · YOU WIN!	p.26	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)		p.2	#14	0.013514 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)		p.2	#49	0.009174 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)		p.2	#51	0.009009 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)		p.26	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	HOW TO PLAY · ON A TURN	p.12	#9	0.014493 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	LIGHT-SPEED VARIANT NOT RECOMMENDED FOR YOUR FIRST GAME!	p.28	#1	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

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 84 ms · first delta 5619 ms · total 5723 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 84 ms · ask 5638 ms · gateway work 5723 ms · total 5723 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2691
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 147.5 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.061 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 44s 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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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: BEFORE_FIRST_PLAY — "before the first turn" / "before we begin"
matched words (in the normalized question): before the first round

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 304), 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.