Ruling — Federation

← Federation

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Federationbg-345868-en-1e

The setup instructions vary depending on the specific game and number of players:

**4-Player Game Central Board Setup**

1. For your first game, the Production Structure tiles and Megastructure tokens are printed on the central board.[1][2]

2. Place the resources next to the central board.[1]

3. Place the 6 Trade discs for each player on the yellow planet, Arratooine.[1]

4. Sort the Alteration tokens by power, mix each set thoroughly, and then place 4 each facedown on the corresponding moons.[1]

5. Reveal the tokens placed on the first moon.[1]

6. Place the remaining Alteration tokens facedown next to the central board.[1]

7. Place the Mage pawn for each player on the start moon of the blue planet, 6Moon.[1]

8. Sort the Erudite tiles by level and by color and place them facedown: Level 3: Randomly place 1 tile faceup per color and return the remaining Level 3 tiles to the game box; Level 2: Form a pile of 3 facedown tiles per color; Level 1: Form a pile of 3 facedown tiles per color and reveal the top tile of each pile.[1]

9. Place the Medals of Honor for each planet on the designated spaces.[1]

10. Randomly place 4 Asteroid tokens facedown and return the remaining tokens to the box.[2]

11. Randomly place 4 Dead Asteroid tokens facedown and return the remaining tokens to the box.[2]

12. Place the Miner pawn for each player on the orange planet, Neo.[2]

13. Place a Major Project marker on the first step of the Funding track of each Major Project.[2]

14. Randomly place 2 Megastructure tokens on each megastructure.[2]

15. Place the Joint Major Project marker for each player on the first space for the Joint Major Project.[2]

16. Place a Score marker for each player on the 0 space of the lower score track, and place the other Score marker on the 0 space of the upper score track.[2]

17. Shuffle the 5 green-background Law tiles and place them facedown on the designated space, and do the same for the purple-background Law tiles on the other space, revealing the top tile of each pile (ensuring they are different; if they are the same, reshuffle the righthand pile and reveal a new top tile).[2]

**2-Player Game Modifications**

1. Add the components marked with 2.[3]

2. Place each Major Project marker on the corresponding space on the Funding track.[3]

3. Place each Medal of Honor on the corresponding space.[3]

4. Shuffle the 5 Federated Planet Blocking tiles and the 5 Senate Room Blocking tiles into separate facedown stacks and place each stack next to the central board.[3]

5. Reveal the first tile of each stack.[3]

6. Place the Neutral Player Vote tiles next to the central board.[3]

**3-Player Game Modifications**

1. Add the components marked with 3.[4]

2. Place each Medal of Honor on the corresponding spaces.[4]

3. Shuffle the 5 Federated Planet Blocking tiles and place them in a facedown stack next to the central board.[4]

4. Reveal the first tile.[4]

5. Place the Neutral Player Vote tiles next to the central board.[4]

**Player Board Setup**

1. Place the Authority marker on the first step of your authority scale.[5]

2. Place your 4 Ambassador tokens on the corresponding spaces.[5]

3. Place 1 spaceship in your hangar.[5]

4. Next to your player board, form a supply with the 7 remaining spaceships, the 12 Special Mission tokens, and the Assistant die.[5][6]

[1] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP 4-PLAYER GAME CENTRAL BOARD

[2] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.5

[3] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.27 · 2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game

[4] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.26 · 3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play

[5] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.6

[6] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.6 · SETUP PLAYER BOARD

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 85 ms · ask 6323 ms · total 6412 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6412 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "For your first game, the Produc Megastructure tokens are pri 6 Place the resources next to the central board. Place the 6 Trade discs for each player on the yellow planet, Arratooine. 1 Sort the Alteration tokens by power, mix each set thoroughly, and then place 4 each facedown on the corresponding ", "headingPath": "SETUP 4-PLAYER GAME CENTRAL BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "For your first game, the Production Structure tiles and the Megastructure tokens are printed on the central board. 8 Randomly place 4 Asteroid tokens facedown. Return the remaining tokens back into the box. 9 Randomly place 4 Dead Asteroid tokens facedown. Return the remaining tokens back into the b", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "When playing a 3-player game, the rules are the same as with 4 players except for the following modifications: With 3 players, add the components marked with 2 and 3 Place each Medal of Honor on the corresponding spaces. 1 / At the beginning of each round, reveal a Federated Planet Blocking tile and", "headingPath": "3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.046176, "snippet": "When playing a 2-player game, the rules are the same as with 4 players but with the following modifications: With 2 players, add the components marked with 2 Place each Major Project marker on the corresponding space on the Funding track. Place each Medal of Honor on the corresponding space. 1 / At ", "headingPath": "2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "4 Next to your player board, form a supply with: the 7 remaining spaceships the 12 Special Mission tokens the Assistant die", "headingPath": "SETUP PLAYER BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "SETUP PLAYER BOARD 1 Place the Authority marker on the first step of your authority scale. LAYOUT OF THE SENATE Right side 2 Place your 4 Ambassador tokens on the corresponding spaces. 3 Place 1 spaceship in your hangar. 4 Next to your player board, form a supply with: - the 7 remaining spaceships -", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Choose a Start player using any method that is mutually agreeable to all players. The Start player is given the President of the Senate pawn to begin the game. Turn the Starting tiles facedown and mix them thoroughly. Next, randomly select as many tiles as there are players in the game plus one. Tur", "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "As soon as you reach the highest degree of authority, take the pile of Deep-Space tiles and choose 1 of them. (At the beginning of the game, the number of Deep-Space tiles is equal to the number of players + 1.) Reveal the tile you have chosen, place it on your player board, and immediately receive ", "headingPath": "DEEP SPACE TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP 4-PLAYER GAME CENTRAL BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 27, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 26, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP PLAYER BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 698 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 698 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 0.89818 of 2740 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 24, 2026 06:17 UTC

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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	SETUP 4-PLAYER GAME CENTRAL BOARD	p.4	0.048916 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)		p.5	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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play	p.26	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
#4	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game	p.27	0.046176 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	SETUP PLAYER BOARD	p.6	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))	123
#6	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)		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
#7	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · …	p.7	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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	DEEP SPACE TILES	p.31	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 35 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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	SETUP 4-PLAYER GAME CENTRAL BOARD	p.4	#1	0.048916 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game	p.27	#4	0.046176 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)		p.6	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · …	p.7	#7	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
#5	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	DEEP SPACE TILES	p.31	#8	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
#6	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	SETUP PLAYER BOARD	p.6	#5	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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)		p.5	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play	p.26	#3	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	SETUP 4-PLAYER GAME CENTRAL BOARD	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game	p.27	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play	p.26	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)		p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698)	SETUP PLAYER BOARD	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 85 ms · first delta 2159 ms · total 6412 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 85 ms · ask 6323 ms · gateway work 6412 ms · total 6412 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3241
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 847
tok/sec: 201.9 tok/sec — 847 output tokens in 4.196 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 2s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 631), 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.