Ruling — Space Base

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

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

### Setup

1. Each player takes 1 command console, 1 set of 12 starting ships, and 1 counter (cube) for each track: 1, 1, and 1.[1]

2. Players place their console in front of them, place the and counters on the 0 space, and the counter on the 5 space.[1]

3. Players place each starting ship faceup in the sectors indicated by the sector number in the upper right-hand corner of the card, so each sector on the board has 1 card.[1]

4. Place the 12 colony cards faceup in ascending sector order.[1]

5. Separate the 18 shipyard fleet cards into three decks based on their card-backs, shuffle each deck separately, place them face-down, and draw the top six cards from each deck to lay face-up to create the shipyard.[1]

6. Place the charges in a pool available to all players.[1]

7. Ensure each player's starts at 5.[1]

8. Each player draws one random card from the level 1 deck, loses credits equal to the card's cost, and places the card in its respective sector on their board.[1]

9. Turn the card currently in that sector upside down and "deploy" it in the same sector.[1]

10. Determine the starting player by identifying who drew the card with the highest sector number; if tied, the player with the highest dice roll from a roll becomes the starting player.[1]

11. Players gain additional resources based on turn order: the starting player gains nothing, the 2nd player gains 1, the 3rd player gains 2, the 4th player gains 1, and the 5th player gains 1.[1]

### On a Turn

1. The starting player takes the first turn, and players continue taking turns clockwise until the end of the game.[2]

2. **Abilities May Be Triggered**: All players may optionally trigger abilities as desired; the active player may trigger blue or green ability boxes, while inactive players may only trigger red or green ability boxes.[2]

3. **Roll**: The active player rolls both dice; "re-roll" or "set dice" abilities may be used during this step.[2]

4. **Allocate Dice**: Each player independently chooses to claim the dice separately or as a sum.[2] Any player choosing the sum may trigger abilities showing the green 2 dice and arrow icon.[2]

5. **Gain Rewards**: Each player gains rewards from their cards for the sector(s) the dice hit.[2] The active player gains blue rewards for cards on their board, and passive players gain red rewards for deployed cards.[2] If doubles are rolled and dice are taken separately, a player gains rewards for that sector twice.[2]

6. **Buy a Card**: The active player may buy one card from the Shipyard or a Colony card, provided they can afford it.[3] If they buy a card, they must spend all of their (resetting the yellow cube to 0).[3] The card is placed in the appropriate sector, and the existing card in that sector is turned upside down and "deployed".[3]

7. **Charge Abilities May Be Triggered**: Players may trigger charge abilities as before.[3]

8. **Refill Shipyard**: If any cards were taken from the shipyard, replace them with the top card of their respective deck so each level has six cards.[3]

9. **Income**: If the active player's cube is lower than their cube, they move their cube up to be equal with their cube.[3]

10. The active player's turn ends, and play passes clockwise.[2]

### End of the Game

1. The game is triggered to end when any player reaches at least 40.[4]

2. Finish the current round so each player has an equal number of turns.[4]

3. The player with the most total is the winner.[4]

4. If players are tied, play one more full round; the player with the most total after that round is the winner.[4]

5. If still tied, continue playing extra rounds until a winner is determined.[4]

[1] 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

[2] RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook · p.12 · HOW TO PLAY · ON A TURN

[3] RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook · p.13 · ON A TURN · END OF TURN!

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

🔧 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 97 ms · ask 11328 ms · total 11428 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 11428 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 12, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "The starting player takes the first turn of the game. When a player finishes their turn, the next player clockwise around the table takes a turn. Players continue taking turns until the end of the game. See Page 16, 'End of Game.' When a player is taking a turn, they are considered the active player", "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · ON A TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.048652, "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": 1, "score": 0.046175, "snippet": "Learn to Play Space Base at ALDERAC.COM/ SPACE_BASE JOHN D CLAIR FIELD MANUAL ™ ™ 1", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045455, "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": "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": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "ABILITIES MAY BE TRIGGERED: Same as before, players may now trigger abilities if possible and desired. BUY A CARD: The active player may buy any one card they can afford from the 18 available ship cards in the Shipyard, or buy a Colony card. The active player may choose to buy no cards if they want ", "headingPath": "ON A TURN · END OF TURN!", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If you are a passive player and the active player rolled a 5 and a 6, you may choose to take the sector 11 reward for 4 ) or both the sector 5 and 6 rewards for a total of 3 -2 from 5 and 1 from 6. In this case, sector 11 is clearly the better choice. The ship you bought has a sector number of 9. Th", "headingPath": "PASSIVE PLAYER EXAMPLE: ALLOCATING DICE/GAINING REWARDS · EXAMPLE: BUYING AND PLACING A CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "13 5. ABILITIES MAY BE TRIGGERED: Same as before, players may now trigger abilities if possible and desired. 6. BUY A CARD: The active player may buy any one card they can afford from the 18 available ship cards in the Shipyard, or buy a Colony card. The active player may choose to buy no cards if t", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TIMING RESTRICTIONS OF ABILITIES: · 1. COMMAND CONSOLES · 2. COLONY CARDS · 3. THE SHIPYARD · 4. CHARGE TOKENS · 5. DETERMINE STARTING PLAYER", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · ON A TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ON A TURN · END OF TURN!", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 375}]
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: 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 0.89500 of 3000 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 07:59

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)	HOW TO PLAY · ON A TURN	p.12	0.04866 (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)	END OF THE GAME	p.16	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
#3	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)		p.1	0.046175 (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))	83
#4	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	0.045455 (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)	SET DICE · EXCHANGE THIS CARD WITH ANY OTHER CARD ON YOUR BOARD · YOU WIN!	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
#6	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	ON A TURN · END OF TURN!	p.13	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
#7	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	PASSIVE PLAYER EXAMPLE: ALLOCATING DICE/GAINING REWARDS · EXAMPLE: BUYING AND PLACING A CARD	p.15	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)		p.13	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)	HOW TO PLAY · ON A TURN	p.12	#1	0.04866 (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 Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	LIGHT-SPEED VARIANT NOT RECOMMENDED FOR YOUR FIRST GAME!	p.28	#9	0.029199 (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
#3	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	#4	0.045455 (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 Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	ACTIVE PLAYER EXAMPLE 1: ALLOCATING DICE/GAINING REWARDS · ACTIVE PLAYER EXAMPLE 2: ALLOCATING DICE/GAINING REWARDS	p.14	#17	0.013889 (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)	ON A TURN · END OF TURN!	p.13	#6	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
#6	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)		p.2	#13	0.025019 (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 Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	CORE CONCEPTS · SIMULTANEOUS REWARDS · DEPLOYING SHIPS · DEPLOYED SHIPS STACK · STATION VS. DEPLOYED REWARDS	p.7	#11	0.02758 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	END OF THE GAME	p.16	#2	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	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	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	HOW TO PLAY · ON A TURN	p.12	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	ON A TURN · END OF TURN!	p.13	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Space Base — Rulebook (corpus doc 375)	END OF THE GAME	p.16	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 97 ms · first delta 6932 ms · total 11428 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 97 ms · ask 11328 ms · gateway work 11428 ms · total 11428 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2790
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 913
tok/sec: 205.3 tok/sec — 913 output tokens in 4.447 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 37s 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 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.