Ruling — Bus — RuleSage

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You asked

Before anyone takes a turn, how is everything laid out on the table?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Busbg-552-en-1e

Before anyone takes a turn, the following setup occurs: 1. Attach the clock hand to the clock face on the board using the fastener [1]. 2. Place the gameboard in the middle of the table [1]. 3. Each player chooses a color and takes the Score disc, 5 buses, 20 Action markers, and 25 Bus Line markers of that color [1]. 4. Place the 5 Time stones on their spaces on the time-control device attached to the clock (in a 3-player game, use only Time stones and leave one space empty) [1]. 5. Point the clock hand to the house [1]. 6. Place 4 passengers around Central Park: 1 passenger on each roundabout [1]. 7. One time around in turn order, each player places one of their Bus Line markers on any street [1]. 8. One time around in reverse turn order, each player places a second Bus Line marker continuing from one of the ends of their previous marker (placing it in an unoccupied street if possible) [1]. 9. Each player places their Score disc on space 0 of the Score track on the left side of the gameboard [1]. 10. Each player places 1 of their buses on 1 of their spaces in the Buses area on the right side of the gameboard [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Bus — Rulebook · p.1 · route map · Assembly · Setting Up · First Bus Lines · First Buildings · Play

🔧 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 302 ms · ask 5597 ms · total 5910 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5910 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "In this strange universe, someone with a scientific bent, but little regard for cosmic consequences has created a device that can stretch time. They're thrilled to demonstrate it for anyone curious, even the local bus companies! When you resolve your Action marker here, you choose whether to pause t", "headingPath": "Action: Clock · Only 1 passenger per building!", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "October 1999 Before your first game, attach the clock hand to the clock face on the board using the fastener. 4 One time around in turn order, each player places one of their Bus Line markers on any street - even if another Bus Line marker is already on it. Then, one time around in reverse turn orde", "headingPath": "route map · Assembly · Setting Up · First Bus Lines · First Buildings · Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Resolve the actions from top to bottom on the gameboard, starting with Line Expansion and ending with Starting Player . For multi-use actions, resolve them left to right , despite alphabetical order. This means that for Line Expansion and Buildings , the last person to select it will resolve it firs", "headingPath": "Phase 2: Resolve Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The game can end in 1 of 3 ways: If all construction sites are occupied by buildings, the game ends at the end of the round. Green has 2 buses, and there are multiple passengers (1 at A, 4 at the train station) eager to ride the green line. Unfortunately, the only available office on the green line ", "headingPath": "End of the Game · Action: Starting Player · Credits · Tested by (thank you very much!):", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "In turn order, each player selects an action by placing one of their Action markers on a space along the right side of the gameboard (the actions are explained in Phase 2: Resolve Actions ). The actions Buses , Clock , and Starting Player each have only 1 space. The other actions have spaces labeled", "headingPath": "Phase 1: Select Actions · Beep! Beep! · Contents · Action: Line Expansion", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In other words, you can transport a waiting passenger on your bus line to an empty building of the right type on your bus line. Note: You do not actually move your bus pieces on the map. If it helps you to do so, you could, but put them back in the Buses area after your turn. the Example 1: The pers", "headingPath": "Only 1 passenger per bus! · Action: Buses", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "New passengers stream into the city by train. The train stations bustle with passengers rushing home, or to work, or out for a drink.... Passengers is an action with dwindling action power . A is on the left, so the first to resolve the action gets to do it the most. Each time you resolve an Action ", "headingPath": "Action: Passengers · Action: Buildings", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Run your buses along your bus line, transporting passengers where they need to go right now, and earning you points! Each time you resolve an Action marker here, you must try to use each of your buses to transport 1 passenger to their destination (an umpty building of the type indicated by the clock", "headingPath": "Action: Vrrooomm!", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "route map · Assembly · Setting Up · First Bus Lines · First Buildings · Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 457}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 457 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 457 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)
debug row retained until: Nov 7, 2026 05:46

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 Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	Action: Clock · Only 1 passenger per building!	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 Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	route map · Assembly · Setting Up · First Bus Lines · First Buildings · Play	p.1	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
#3	RULEBOOK Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	Phase 2: Resolve Actions	p.1	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
#4	RULEBOOK Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	End of the Game · Action: Starting Player · Credits · Tested by (thank you very much!):	p.2	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
#5	RULEBOOK Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	Phase 1: Select Actions · Beep! Beep! · Contents · Action: Line Expansion	p.1	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
#6	RULEBOOK Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	Only 1 passenger per bus! · Action: Buses	p.2	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
#7	RULEBOOK Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	Action: Passengers · Action: Buildings	p.2	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 Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	Action: Vrrooomm!	p.2	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Bus — Rulebook (corpus doc 457)	route map · Assembly · Setting Up · First Bus Lines · First Buildings · Play	p.1	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 302 ms · first delta 3697 ms · total 5910 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 302 ms · ask 5597 ms · gateway work 5910 ms · total 5910 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4419
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 291
tok/sec: 135.9 tok/sec — 291 output tokens in 2.141 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 53s 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 387), 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.