Ruling — On Mars

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: On Marsbg-184267-en-1e

The game is played over several rounds, each consisting of two phases:

1. **COLONIZATION PHASE**:

* In turn order, each player takes a turn.[1]

* The order of play is determined by the order of the Player markers on the Turn Order spaces, starting with the leftmost space on the Orbit side (1) and proceeding right, ending at the rightmost space on the Colony side (8).[1]

* On your turn, you must perform one Main action.[1]

* You may also perform one Executive action either before or after your Main action.[1]

* If your Player marker is on the Orbit side of the board, only the Orbital Station actions are available to you.[1]

* If your Player marker is on the Colony side of the board, only the Colony actions are available to you.[1]

* Some actions may require placing a Colonist from your Living Quarters onto an Action slot.[2] If other players' Colonists are already on the Action slots for that action, you must either pay 1 Crystal or move a Colonist from your Living Quarters to your Working Area for each other player color present.[2]

* Some actions may be boosted by spending Crystals.[1]

* When your turn is complete, lay your Player marker down as a reminder that you've finished your turn.[1]

* The next player then takes their turn.[1]

* At the end of the Colonization phase, if the Remaining Missions marker has reached the end of its track, the end of the game is triggered.[3]

2. **SHUTTLE PHASE**:

* Players may travel between the colony and the space station in orbit.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook · p.8 · GAMEPLAY · COLONIZATION PHASE: · SHUTTLE PHASE: · Order of Play: · COLONIZATION PHASE · MAIN BOARD ACTIONS · …

[2] RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook · p.9 · RED COLONIST:

[3] RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook · p.21 · END OF THE GAME · Colonists · Technology

[4] RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook · p.2 · GAME OVERVIEW

🔧 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 75 ms · ask 4439 ms · total 4515 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4515 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.046032, "snippet": "The game is played over several rounds, each consisting of two phases: The COLONIZATION PHASE and the SHUTTLE PHASE . During the COLONIZATION PHASE , each player takes a turn, during which they take actions. The actions a player is able to take depends on the side of the board they are on. If player", "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "During setup, place only 2 Crystals and 2 of each Resource in the Warehouse. During setup, return the 8 remaining tech tiles to the box. Check page 6 for the starting layout of Shelters. The additional cost to place a Colonist on an Action slot is equal to the number of Colonists already on Action s", "headingPath": "2-PLAYER GAME · SPACE ODDITY VARIANT · CREDITS", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Each player chooses a color and takes the following: 1 Player board. 1 Player marker. 1 OP marker, placed on the 0 space of the OP track. 1 Resource of each of the 5 types, placed on the matching spaces of your Storage ( A ). 1 Crystal, placed in the Depot ( E ). 1 Shelter Tech tile (set-aside earli", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The player who has seen the film 'The Martian' the most times is the first player. In clockwise order, starting with the first player, each player places their Player marker in any empty Turn Order space (1-8) and may immediately receive the benefit of that space (see page 2 of the Reference book). ", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP · Minerals · IMPORTANT TERMS · Example of placing the Shuttle:", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Your Player board represents a display of your main Shelter, and it is divided into different sections: A. STORAGE Your Resources will be stored here. There are five different Resources in the game: Minerals, Batteries, Water, Plants, and Oxygen. The number of Resources of each type you can store on", "headingPath": "PLAYER BOARD · B. LABORATORY · C. LIVING QUARTERS · D. WORKING AREA · E. DEPOT · F. HANGAR", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.030415, "snippet": "At the end of the Colonization phase, if the Remaining Missions marker has reached the end of its track (which may be caused by completing 3 missions, progressing the colony to a high level, or a combination of both), the end of the game is triggered. When the end of the game is triggered, play unti", "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME · Colonists · Technology", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Then, flip the tile face up, ensuring the correct orientation is maintained. Gain a number o f Resources matching the type of Building equal to the new size of the Complex (i.e. the number of contiguous hexes consisting of tiles matching the tile you just placed). If the Building you placed is not a", "headingPath": "CONSTRUCT A BUILDING:", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "This icon can be found at the top of some action icons and indicates that in order to perform the action, you must place one of your Colonists from your Living Quarters onto one of the Action slots. If there are currently no Colonists of other players on the Action slots for this action, there is no", "headingPath": "RED COLONIST:", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · COLONIZATION PHASE: · SHUTTLE PHASE: · Order of Play: · COLONIZATION PHASE · MAIN BOARD ACTIONS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "RED COLONIST:", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 21, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME · Colonists · Technology", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 268}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 268 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 268 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 0.91951 of 1230 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 09:45

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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	GAME OVERVIEW	p.2	0.046032 (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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	2-PLAYER GAME · SPACE ODDITY VARIANT · CREDITS	p.24	0.045262 (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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	PLAYER SETUP	p.6	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
#4	RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	PLAYER SETUP · Minerals · IMPORTANT TERMS · Example of placing the Shuttle:	p.7	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
#5	RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	PLAYER BOARD · B. LABORATORY · C. LIVING QUARTERS · D. WORKING AREA · E. DEPOT · F. HANGAR	p.6	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
#6	RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	END OF THE GAME · Colonists · Technology	p.21	0.030415 (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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	CONSTRUCT A BUILDING:	p.13	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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	RED COLONIST:	p.9	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 50 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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	GAME OVERVIEW	p.2	#1	0.046032 (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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	FIRST COLONISTS VARIANT	p.24	#14	0.027783 (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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	RED COLONIST:	p.9	#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
#4	RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	GAME SETUP · ORBIT SIDE · COLONY SIDE	p.4	#11	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
#5	RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	END OF THE GAME · Colonists · Technology	p.21	#6	0.030415 (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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	GAMEPLAY · COLONIZATION PHASE: · SHUTTLE PHASE: · Order of Play: · COLONIZATION PHASE · MAIN BOARD ACTIONS · …	p.8	#9	0.029727 (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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	SOLO GAME · SETUP · COLONIZATION PHASE · SHUTTLE PHASE	p.22	#10	0.029418 (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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	PLAYER SETUP	p.6	#3	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 On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	GAMEPLAY · COLONIZATION PHASE: · SHUTTLE PHASE: · Order of Play: · COLONIZATION PHASE · MAIN BOARD ACTIONS · …	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	RED COLONIST:	p.9	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	END OF THE GAME · Colonists · Technology	p.21	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK On Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 268)	GAME OVERVIEW	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 75 ms · first delta 2669 ms · total 4515 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 75 ms · ask 4439 ms · gateway work 4515 ms · total 4515 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3581
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 369
tok/sec: 204.7 tok/sec — 369 output tokens in 1.803 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 39s 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 196), 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.