Ruling — Catan — RuleSage

You asked

How do I move a ship?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Catanbg-13-en-1e · Catan: Seafarersbg-325-en-1e

During your Action phase, you may move 1 ship subject to the following rules and restrictions: 1. Remove the ship from its current location and place it in a new location, obeying all usual rules for ship placement [1]. 2. You may not move a ship that you built during the current turn [1]. 3. You may only move a ship if one of its two ends is "open" (meaning it is not next to one of your ships or buildings) [1]. 4. You may not move a ship that is part of a continuous line of ships connecting two of your buildings, even if an opponent's building interrupts that line [1]. 5. You may not move a ship to or from an edge of the hex occupied by the pirate [1]. 6. You may not move any ships that are part of a "closed" route (a route connecting one of your buildings to a village on a small island) [2][3].

[1] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook · p.2 · OBJECTIVE · GOLD FIELDS · ACTIVATE THE ROBBER OR THE PIRATE · SHIPS · MOVE A SHIP

[2] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook · p.15 ·

[3] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook · p.15 · VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 289 ms · ask 12470 ms · total 12769 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 12769 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Seafarers scenarios present you with new goals and paths to victory. Reach that goal during your turn to win the game. Each player with a settlement on a gold field hex that produces this turn receives 1 resource card of their choice (brick, wood, wool, wheat, or ore). Similarly, a player receives 2", "headingPath": "OBJECTIVE · GOLD FIELDS · ACTIVATE THE ROBBER OR THE PIRATE · SHIPS · MOVE A SHIP", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.031778, "snippet": "Now take the 9 harbor pieces (the small 5-sided pieces with ships on them) and randomly place one on top of each harbor on the frame. See Illustration P .", "headingPath": "set-up, variaBle", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.031498, "snippet": "If there are not enough cloth tokens, take any extra needed from the general supply. If there are zero cloth tokens next to a village, it no longer produces. Do not take tokens from the general supply. Each pair of cloth tokens is worth 1 VP. Unpaired cloth tokens are worth 0 VP. SHIP MOVEMENT Any r", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.031281, "snippet": "Assemble the frame as outlined on pages 2-3. Note: If you want to vary relative harbor locations slightly, just shuffle the order of the frame pieces and do not place the random harbor pieces as outlined below in point 2. Turn the terrain hexes face down. Shuffle the terrain hexes. Randomly place th", "headingPath": "set-up, variaBle", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.03101, "snippet": "Set up the frame, the four small islands, and sea hexes as shown. Set up the villages by placing the number discs and cloth tokens as shown. Gather the land hexes and number discs for the large islands and place them randomly in the empty hex areas. Randomly place ports on the locations shown. Playe", "headingPath": "VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030798, "snippet": "You can also trade without the other players! During your turn, you can always trade at 4:1 by putting 4 identical resource cards back in their stack and taking any 1 resource card of your choice for it. If you have a settlement or city on a harbor Y , you can trade with the bank more favorably: at ", "headingPath": "b) Maritime Trade Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.02971, "snippet": "Unless you're using the Starting Set-Up for Experienced Players, the oldest player goes first. On your turn, you can do the following in the order listed: Illustration C Illustration D You must roll for resource production Y (the result applies to all players). You may trade Y resource cards with ot", "headingPath": "turn overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029437, "snippet": "Not everyone is content with a simple life on the shore... Your restless spirit cannot resist the call of the open sea! While your hometown grows and thrives, you and your rival seafarers seek new thrills, yearning to plant fresh roots on nearby islands. CN3083 The rumors of gold and resources are s", "headingPath": "SEAFARERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OBJECTIVE · GOLD FIELDS · ACTIVATE THE ROBBER OR THE PIRATE · SHIPS · MOVE A SHIP", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 43 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 43 boosted
layering — route: not layered — one pooled read: the books were read together and that read answered, so re-reading them one at a time would spend the same GPU to re-derive an answer already given
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)
debug row retained until: Nov 3, 2026 21:00

retrieval — what the search arm returned

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 Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216)	OBJECTIVE · GOLD FIELDS · ACTIVATE THE ROBBER OR THE PIRATE · SHIPS · MOVE A SHIP	p.2	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
#2	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	set-up, variaBle	p.13	0.031778 (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))	154
#3	RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216)		p.15	0.031498 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	set-up, variaBle	p.12	0.031281 (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 Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216)	VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME	p.15	0.03101 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	b) Maritime Trade Y	p.4	0.030798 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	turn overview	p.4	0.02971 (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 Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216)	SEAFARERS	p.1	0.029437 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216)	OBJECTIVE · GOLD FIELDS · ACTIVATE THE ROBBER OR THE PIRATE · SHIPS · MOVE A SHIP	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216)		p.15	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216)	VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 289 ms · first delta 11239 ms · total 12769 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 289 ms · ask 12470 ms · gateway work 12769 ms · total 12769 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3125
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 204
tok/sec: 137.2 tok/sec — 204 output tokens in 1.487 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 1), 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.