You asked
"Humanity’s search for alien life has grown more ambitious. With discovery within reach, powerful organizations have stepped in, each bringing its own vision, methods, and motives." / component list "11 asymmetric organizations" / "The organizations introduce a whole new way to play SETI"
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligencebg-418059-en-1e · SETI: Space Agenciesbg-445048-en-1e
I looked through SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence'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.
SETI is a game of exploration and, ultimately, discovery. You know alien life is out there - you just need to find it. Through judicious use of limited resources, you will launch probes, explore planets, listen to the stars, and advance the science of exobiology. how to play video Each player contro
Jeffrey Berman, Tomáš Krauz, Arien Malec, Joe Ritter, Katharina Schrempf, UtterMarcus, Andi Muhammad Fadlillah Firstiogusran (Xiot), Bryan Yan, Dirk Nielsen, Ruda Malý, Michal Ringer, Michal Mašek, Filip Murmak, Martin Sedmera, Michal Peichl, Jiří Bauma, Miloš Procházka, dillí, Zbyšek Nádeník, Kryšt
alien cards The alien species in the game are represented by two face-down boards. Below each alien board, there are three discovery spaces representing traces of alien life that must be filled to discover the species. These life traces are usually earned by scanning the nearby stars. These life tra
Pay 3 energy to turn one of your probes into a lander . This is a main action and can only be performed if your probe is on a space with a planet (other than Earth). If there is an orbiter at that planet already, this costs only 2 energy instead. (It does not matter who the orbiter belongs to.) Land
In games with fewer than 4 players, you placed nonplayer markers at the 20-point and 30-point milestones during setup. At the end of a turn in which you reach or pass one of these milestones, a nonplayer research group discovers something important about one of the two alien species. Each species ha
🔧 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 129 ms · ask 3551 ms · total 3682 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 3682 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 1, "score": 0.032522, "snippet": "SETI is a game of exploration and, ultimately, discovery. You know alien life is out there - you just need to find it. Through judicious use of limited resources, you will launch probes, explore planets, listen to the stars, and advance the science of exobiology. how to play video Each player contro", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "Jeffrey Berman, Tomáš Krauz, Arien Malec, Joe Ritter, Katharina Schrempf, UtterMarcus, Andi Muhammad Fadlillah Firstiogusran (Xiot), Bryan Yan, Dirk Nielsen, Ruda Malý, Michal Ringer, Michal Mašek, Filip Murmak, Martin Sedmera, Michal Peichl, Jiří Bauma, Miloš Procházka, dillí, Zbyšek Nádeník, Kryšt", "headingPath": "THANK YOU TO ALL TESTERS:", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.031258, "snippet": "alien cards The alien species in the game are represented by two face-down boards. Below each alien board, there are three discovery spaces representing traces of alien life that must be filled to discover the species. These life traces are usually earned by scanning the nearby stars. These life tra", "headingPath": "Refilling the Card Row · DISCOVERING ALIEN SPECIES · DISCOVERY · FURTHER RESEARCH · Overflow Spaces", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.03055, "snippet": "Pay 3 energy to turn one of your probes into a lander . This is a main action and can only be performed if your probe is on a space with a planet (other than Earth). If there is an orbiter at that planet already, this costs only 2 energy instead. (It does not matter who the orbiter belongs to.) Land", "headingPath": "REMINDER: · Marking Life Traces", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.03009, "snippet": "In games with fewer than 4 players, you placed nonplayer markers at the 20-point and 30-point milestones during setup. At the end of a turn in which you reach or pass one of these milestones, a nonplayer research group discovers something important about one of the two alien species. Each species ha", "headingPath": "NEUTRAL MILESTONES", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.029644, "snippet": "Each alien species comes with a special deck of cards. These cards are slightly stronger than regular cards and may be gained only from the alien species. In your hand, they follow the rules of regular cards (except for the Exertian species cards, which do not count toward your hand limit). You don'", "headingPath": "ALIEN CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029211, "snippet": "GENERAL PIECES 48 tech tiles 4 gold scoring tiles 12 two-point tiles the main deck of 138 cards 1 starting player marker 30 credit and 30 energy tokens* 2 solar system rotation tokens 70 data tokens* ALIEN SPECIES MASCAMITES 1 alien board 1 rule sheet 10 Mascamite cards 7 Mascamite samples EXERTIANS", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.02879, "snippet": "7 The 4 gold scoring tiles are double sided. Place them beside the board with a random side up. Place neutral markers above the 20- and 30-point spaces on the scoring track. Use markers of an unused color. For 1-player and 2-player games, place 2 markers above each of the two spaces. There are 12 di", "headingPath": "6 DATA · GOLD SCORING TILES · 8 NEUTRAL MILESTONES · 9 TECHNOLOGIES · 11 SOLAR SYSTEM ROTATION TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}]
- 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 251 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 251 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 23:33
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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | p.1 | 0.032522 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | THANK YOU TO ALL TESTERS: | p.27 | 0.032002 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | Refilling the Card Row · DISCOVERING ALIEN SPECIES · DISCOVERY · FURTHER RESEARCH · Overflow Spaces | p.20 | 0.031258 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | REMINDER: · Marking Life Traces | p.11 | 0.03055 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | NEUTRAL MILESTONES | p.18 | 0.03009 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | ALIEN CARDS | p.20 | 0.029644 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | p.3 | 0.029211 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | 6 DATA · GOLD SCORING TILES · 8 NEUTRAL MILESTONES · 9 TECHNOLOGIES · 11 SOLAR SYSTEM ROTATION TOKENS | p.5 | 0.02879 (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 52 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 — 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 SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896) | p.1 | #9 | 0.016393 (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 re-ranker chose it | |
| #2 | RULEBOOK SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | Refilling the Card Row · DISCOVERING ALIEN SPECIES · DISCOVERY · FURTHER RESEARCH · Overflow Spaces | p.20 | #3 | 0.031258 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | NEUTRAL MILESTONES | p.18 | #5 | 0.03009 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | ALIEN CARDS | p.20 | #6 | 0.029644 (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 SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896) | SIGNAL TOKENS · USING SIGNAL TOKENS · FAQ · Can we play 5 rounds with organizations? · Can we play 4 rounds with quick start cards but without organizations? · Helion Assembly & Cosmos Strategy Group · … | p.8 | #24 | 0.011905 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | REMINDER: · Marking Life Traces | p.11 | #4 | 0.03055 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | THANK YOU TO ALL TESTERS: | p.27 | #2 | 0.032002 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251) | p.1 | #1 | 0.032522 (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
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 129 ms · first delta 3573 ms · total 3682 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 129 ms · ask 3551 ms · gateway work 3682 ms · total 3682 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 2658
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 145.2 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.062 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 4s 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
- NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
this game registers NO errata cards (edition 177), 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.