Ruling — Space Alert

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Space Alertbg-38453-en-1e

To play Space Alert, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Choose a difficulty level for common threats (lower, higher, or random) and prepare the external and internal common threat decks accordingly.[1]

2. Choose a difficulty level for serious threats and prepare the external and internal serious threat decks.[1]

3. Choose colors.[1]

4. Choose players to take the roles of captain, communications officer, and chief of security (one player may take multiple roles).[1]

5. Set up the game boards according to the illustration.[1]

6. Choose a soundtrack.[1]

**The Action Round**

1. Start the soundtrack or start reading the Scenario card.[2][3]

2. Pick up your 5 first phase action cards.[2][3]

3. Plan your actions for the first phase by playing your cards face down on the 1-3 spaces of your Action Board.[2][3]

* You can play your card with either half on top; the top half determines your action for that turn, while the bottom half has no effect.[2][3]

* You can change the cards you played any time before you end the phase.[2][3]

* You are not allowed to show your cards to other players, but talking about them is allowed.[2][3]

4. End the first phase by picking up your second phase cards (adding them to the cards left over from the first phase).[2]

5. Start planning actions for turns 4-7.[2]

6. Plan second phase actions until you pick up your third phase cards.[2]

7. The third phase begins, during which you plan actions 8-12 until the end of the Action Round.[2]

**Player Actions**

1. Players reveal their action for the turn by turning cards over left-to-right so the top half remains on top.[4]

2. Players take actions in order, starting with the captain and proceeding clockwise.[4]

3. Possible actions include:

* Red and blue arrows: Move your figure through the door and into the adjacent station in the indicated direction (does not switch decks).[4]

* Gravollift move: Move your figure to the adjacent station on the other deck (does not change zones).[4]

* System activation or repair: Activate or repair the indicated system in your figure's station.[4]

4. If you realize you mis-played a card (upside-down or mixed up red/blue arrows), you may say, "Oops, I tripped," to perform the intended action instead, but your next turn's action will be delayed.[4]

5. If a gravollift move is attempted while the gravollift is damaged or was used by another player earlier this turn, you make the move anyway, but your next turn's action is delayed.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook · p.1 · Soundtracks

[2] RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook · p.2 · 2. ACTION ROUND

[3] RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook · p.2

[4] RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook · p.4 · 3.2 PLAYER ACTIONS

🔧 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 86 ms · ask 5386 ms · total 32739 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 27265 ms · generation 5474 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Start the soundtrack or start reading the Scenario card. Pick up your 5 first phase action cards. You are not allowed to show your cards to other players, but talking about them is allowed. You plan your actions for the first phase by playing your cards face down on the 1-3 spaces of your Action Boa", "headingPath": "2. ACTION ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "You should start with the handbook. It is designed to teach you how to play, while simultaneously presenting the atmosphere of the game. The presentation in the handbook is based on our experience in teaching the game to numerous gaming groups. The material in the handbook is organized by complexity", "headingPath": "Soundtracks", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Start the soundtrack or start reading the Scenario card. Pick up your 5 first phase action cards. You are not allowed to show your cards to other players, but talking about them is allowed. You plan your actions for the first phase by playing your cards face down on the 1-3 spaces of your Action Boa", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Players reveal their action for this turn. (Cards should be turned over left-to-right so that the top half remains on top.) Players take their actions in order, starting with the captain, and proceeding clockwise. If you realize that you mis-played your card either by playing it upside-down or by mi", "headingPath": "3.2 PLAYER ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "Space Alert is a team survival game. Players take on the role of a crew of space explorers sent out through hyperspace to survey a dangerous sector of the Galaxy. The spaceship automatically maps the sector in 10 minutes. The crew's task is to defend the ship until the mission is complete. If they s", "headingPath": "RULEBOOK", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "For a three-player game, use one android. For a two-player game, use two androids. An android is a crew member with no designated player. It has an Action Board and a crew member figure. An android only gets one card - a heroic action card dealt face down on the first row of its Action Board. In a t", "headingPath": "5. WITH FEWER THAN FOUR PLAYERS · 5.1 SETUP · 5.2 ACTION ROUND · 5.3 RESOLUTION ROUND · 6. EXPLORATION CAMPAIGN · 6.1 INDIVIDUAL MISSIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If there are no rockets left in the station or if this square is already occupied, your action has no effect. Activating or re-activating a battlebot squad - If you are not leading a battlebot squad, take the battlebot squad figure lying in storage in that station and set it upright next to your fig", "headingPath": "3.2 PLAYER ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "This indicates the beginning of the Action Round. The communications officer draws the top card of the common (or serious) external threat deck, places it face up near the Trajectory Board corresponding to the specified zone, and gives it a polygonal token with the number corresponding to the indica", "headingPath": "Alert. Enemy activity detected. Please begin first phase. · Time T+1 (2, 3, etc.). Threat. (Serious threat.) Zone red (white, blue). Repeat ... · Time T+1 (2, 3, etc.). Internal threat. (Serious internal threat.) Repeat ... · Unconfirmed report: ... · Incoming data. Repeat ... · Communication system down ... Communications restored. · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Soundtracks", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. ACTION ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3.2 PLAYER ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 402}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 402 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 402 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)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.89327 of 2052 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 14, 2026 20:28

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 Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	2. ACTION ROUND	p.2	0.048387 (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 Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	Soundtracks	p.1	0.048172 (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 Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)		p.2	0.047123 (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 Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	3.2 PLAYER ACTIONS	p.4	0.046898 (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 Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	RULEBOOK	p.1	0.046696 (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 Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	5. WITH FEWER THAN FOUR PLAYERS · 5.1 SETUP · 5.2 ACTION ROUND · 5.3 RESOLUTION ROUND · 6. EXPLORATION CAMPAIGN · 6.1 INDIVIDUAL MISSIONS	p.7	0.046394 (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 Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	3.2 PLAYER ACTIONS	p.4	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 Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	Alert. Enemy activity detected. Please begin first phase. · Time T+1 (2, 3, etc.). Threat. (Serious threat.) Zone red (white, blue). Repeat ... · Time T+1 (2, 3, etc.). Internal threat. (Serious internal threat.) Repeat ... · Unconfirmed report: ... · Incoming data. Repeat ... · Communication system down ... Communications restored. · …	p.3	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 30 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 Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	2. ACTION ROUND	p.2	#1	0.048387 (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 Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	3.2 PLAYER ACTIONS	p.4	#4	0.046898 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	5. WITH FEWER THAN FOUR PLAYERS · 5.1 SETUP · 5.2 ACTION ROUND · 5.3 RESOLUTION ROUND · 6. EXPLORATION CAMPAIGN · 6.1 INDIVIDUAL MISSIONS	p.7	#6	0.046394 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	RULEBOOK	p.1	#5	0.046696 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	5.4 VARIANT - FIFTH CREW MEMBER · 5.5 VARIANT - SOLO SPACE ALERT	p.7	#9	0.028259 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	Overheated Reactor · Alien · Fissure · Battlebot Uprising · Power System Overload · Seeker	p.8	#12	0.027444 (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 Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	Soundtracks	p.1	#2	0.048172 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)		p.2	#3	0.047123 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	Soundtracks	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	2. ACTION ROUND	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Space Alert — Rulebook (corpus doc 402)	3.2 PLAYER ACTIONS	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 86 ms · first delta 2303 ms · total 32739 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 27265 ms · retrieval 86 ms · ask 5386 ms · gateway work 5474 ms · total 32739 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4120
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 626
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 626 output tokens in 3.108 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s 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: 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 331), 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.