Ruling — DinoGenics

← DinoGenics

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: DinoGenicsbg-210296-en-1e

Main Board Setup

1. Place the Mainland Game Board in the center of the table.[1]

2. Place the 8 Basic hotel tiles on the first column of the City Center.[1]

3. Keep all remaining tiles in the DinoGenics facility tile bag.[1]

4. Shuffle the DNA, Manipulation, and Breaking News cards separately and place them on their designated spots of the Mainland Game Board.[1]

5. Draw one DNA card face up to each space of the DNA Market on the Mainland Game Board.[1]

6. Draw four additional DNA cards face up to the Boneyard.[1]

7. Draw the top Breaking News card to the upcoming slot of the Newsroom.[1]

8. Place Blocking Tokens to cover Action Spaces depending on player count:

* 4-5 Players: All board Action Spaces are uncovered.[1]

* 3 Players: Place a Blocking Token on one Action Space of the Farm, DinoGenics, and the City Center.[1]

* 2 Players: Place a Blocking Token on one Action Space of the Farm, DinoGenics, Agency, Uplink, Site A, and two on the City Center.[1]

Visitor Board Setup

1. Place a Faction Token for each player on the outer VP track of the Mainland Game Board.[1]

2. Use a Faction Token for each player to mark player order on the Visitor Board.[1]

3. Choose one person to be the first player at random, then go around the table placing tokens to form the starting order.[1]

4. Place a Tracking Cube for each player on the 0 space of the Reputation Tracks.[1][2]

5. Place the appropriate Visitor Overlay so that Season 1 is underneath the Active header section.[1][2]

Player Board Setup

1. Give each player a Personal Island Board.[3]

2. Give each player 4 fences to form a Starting Pen.[3]

3. Place each player's other Tracking Cube on the 0 space of the Dinosaur Value track at the bottom left of their player board.[3]

4. Deal each player three dinosaur DNA cards and one Manipulation card.[4][3]

5. Hand out workers to each player based on player count:

* 2-3 Players: 4 workers.[3]

* 4-5 Players: 3 workers.[3]

6. Assign starting credits based on turn order:

* Player 1: 3 Credits.[3]

* Players 2 and 3: 4 Credits.[3]

* Players 4 and 5: 5 Credits.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook · p.4 · Setup · Main Board Setup · Visitor Board Setup

[2] RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook · p.6 · Gaining Visitors · 1. Determine player order based on reputation · 2. Assign visitors based on player order · 3. Assign bonus visitors · 4. Each player receives 1 credit per visitor. · Visitor Benefits · …

[3] RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook · p.4 · Player Setup

[4] RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook · p.28 · MUTANT · 1. Main Board Setup: · 2. Visitor Board Setup: · 3. Player Board Setup: · Hand out workers to each player as indicated: · Starting Credits: · …

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 227 ms · ask 4153 ms · total 4383 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4383 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Before each player assumes the role of a multibillion-dollar dinosaur park corporation, endeavoring to recreate extinct lifeforms using questionable genetic DNA manipulation... you will need to do some pre-game setup. Place the Mainland Game Board in the center of the table. Separate out the 8 Basic", "headingPath": "Setup · Main Board Setup · Visitor Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "Give each player a Personal Island Board and 4 fences to form a Starting Pen . Deal each player three dinosaur DNA cards and one Manipulation card. Players have a hand limit of 10 DNA cards , and should discard down to 10 any time they exceed the limit. Manipulation cards are unlimited. Each player'", "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "28 Place the 8 basic hotels in the first space of City Center. Shuffle & place the Manipulation, DNA, Breaking News decks. Draw 3 DNA cards to the Market, and 4 DNA to the Boneyard. Draw a Breaking News card to the upcoming slot. Place a Faction token for each player on the main score track. Place b", "headingPath": "MUTANT · 1.\tMain Board Setup: · 2.\tVisitor Board Setup: · 3.\tPlayer Board Setup: · Hand out workers to each player as indicated: · Starting Credits: · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The first season of the game represents a 'pre-Season' preparation phase in which NO VISITORS are gained via steps 1-4. Players should focus on gaining dinosaurs and facilities to attract future visitors. Determine player order based on reputation (pg 6). Highest reputation will become first player,", "headingPath": "Important: Skip directly to Step 6 in Season 1.", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Starting Credits: Synth doesn't use. Starting DNA Cards: 3 Starting Manipulation Cards: Synth doesn't use. Starting Scandals: 0 Starting Goat Meeples: 2 Starting Workers: 4 Starting Fence: Synth doesn't use. Starting Facilities: 3x Biodome, 2x Basic Hotel. Synth starts as first player. | Rolled Resu", "headingPath": "SYNTH PLAYER BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.030415, "snippet": "Single player scenarios offer unique challenges that take the base rules and mechanics of a two-player game and alter them in dynamic ways. All scenarios consist of unique player board setups, preset starting resources, specific Breaking News cards, and unique victory conditions. When playing a Sing", "headingPath": "Single Player Scenarios · RAPTOR ESCALATION · EASY DIFFICULTY · SPECIAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Playing workers to the mainland is the main method by which players will improve their parks. On each player's turn they must place a worker on an unoccupied Action Space on the mainland, or in rare cases, on an Active Breaking News card. Some Action Spaces incur a cost to use. If a player does not ", "headingPath": "Assigning Workers · Site A · Site B · The Boneyard · The Agency · The Uplink · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "9 Dinosaur Creation Dinosaur Creation and Placement A player can create a dinosaur by placing a worker on DinoGenics IOM and discarding a complete set of DNA cards from their hand. Each dinosaur requires a number of corresponding DNA cards, as indicated in the top right corner of the DNA card. A pla", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · Main Board Setup · Visitor Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Gaining Visitors · 1. Determine player order based on reputation · 2. Assign visitors based on player order · 3. Assign bonus visitors · 4. Each player receives 1 credit per visitor. · Visitor Benefits · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}, {"page": 28, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MUTANT · 1.\tMain Board Setup: · 2.\tVisitor Board Setup: · 3.\tPlayer Board Setup: · Hand out workers to each player as indicated: · Starting Credits: · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1016}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1016 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1016 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 0.87711 of 1717 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 23, 2026 16:48 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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Setup · Main Board Setup · Visitor Board Setup	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Player Setup	p.4	0.047183 (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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	MUTANT · 1. Main Board Setup: · 2. Visitor Board Setup: · 3. Player Board Setup: · Hand out workers to each player as indicated: · Starting Credits: · …	p.28	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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Important: Skip directly to Step 6 in Season 1.	p.5	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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	SYNTH PLAYER BOARD SETUP	p.23	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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Single Player Scenarios · RAPTOR ESCALATION · EASY DIFFICULTY · SPECIAL RULES	p.15	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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Assigning Workers · Site A · Site B · The Boneyard · The Agency · The Uplink · …	p.7	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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)		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 57 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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Setup · Main Board Setup · Visitor Board Setup	p.4	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Single Player Scenarios · RAPTOR ESCALATION · EASY DIFFICULTY · SPECIAL RULES	p.15	#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
#3	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Gaining Visitors · 1. Determine player order based on reputation · 2. Assign visitors based on player order · 3. Assign bonus visitors · 4. Each player receives 1 credit per visitor. · Visitor Benefits · …	p.6	#15	0.014493 (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
#4	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	SPECIAL RULES	p.22	#24	0.012346 (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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Important: Skip directly to Step 6 in Season 1.	p.5	#4	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
#6	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	SYNTH PLAYER BOARD SETUP	p.23	#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
#7	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	MUTANT · 1. Main Board Setup: · 2. Visitor Board Setup: · 3. Player Board Setup: · Hand out workers to each player as indicated: · Starting Credits: · …	p.28	#3	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
#8	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Player Setup	p.4	#2	0.047183 (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 DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Setup · Main Board Setup · Visitor Board Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Gaining Visitors · 1. Determine player order based on reputation · 2. Assign visitors based on player order · 3. Assign bonus visitors · 4. Each player receives 1 credit per visitor. · Visitor Benefits · …	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	Player Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK DinoGenics — Rulebook (corpus doc 1016)	MUTANT · 1. Main Board Setup: · 2. Visitor Board Setup: · 3. Player Board Setup: · Hand out workers to each player as indicated: · Starting Credits: · …	p.28	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 227 ms · first delta 1369 ms · total 4383 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 227 ms · ask 4153 ms · gateway work 4383 ms · total 4383 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3694
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 575
tok/sec: 200.6 tok/sec — 575 output tokens in 2.866 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 22s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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 946), 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.