Ruling — SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

← SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligencebg-418059-en-1e · SETI: Space Agenciesbg-445048-en-1e

The setup process depends on the game mode being played:

Standard Player Setup

1. Each player selects a color and takes the corresponding pieces.[1]

2. The player who last saw a UFO is the starting player and receives the starting player marker.[1]

3. Set starting scores based on turn order: 1 for the first player, 2 for the second, 3 for the third, or 4 for the fourth.[1]

4. All players set publicity to 0 [2] or 4.[1]

5. Each player takes the starting income card in their color.[1]

6. Take the appropriate number of tokens for credits and energy as shown on the back of the income card (4 credits, 3 energy).[1]

7. Place the publicity counter on the marked space of the publicity track.[1]

8. Draw 5 cards from the deck.[1]

9. Turn one card into income.[1]

Setup with Organizations

1. Play only rounds 2, 3, 4, and 5.[2]

2. Prepare end-of-round cards for rounds 2, 3, and 4 only.[2]

3. Determine the starting player and set starting scores based on turn order.[2]

4. Set publicity to 0 for all players.[2]

5. Deal each player 2 random organizations and 3 random quick start cards.[2]

6. Each player chooses 1 organization and 2 quick start cards, keeping all 4 main deck cards.[2]

7. All players simultaneously resolve their 2 quick start cards and gain all starting resources and effects of their chosen organization.[2]

8. (First game recommendation): Give everyone 1 of the four less complex organizations (numbered 1-4), 2 quick start cards, and 4 cards from the main deck.[2]

Solo Setup

1. Set up as a 2-player game.[3]

2. Choose a difficulty and prepare the game for solo as usual.[3]

3. The rival does not get an organization or quick start cards; instead, shuffle one new extra starting action card into the rival's action deck.[3]

4. Set the rival's starting publicity to 4.[3]

5. For difficulty-based objectives: Remove all level I objectives; stack level II and III objectives based on difficulty; reveal the top three tiles.[3]

6. Shuffle the 3 long-term objective tiles and reveal 2 at random.[3]

7. Choose your organization and quick start cards after seeing the neutral quick start cards and the 5 revealed objective tiles.[3]

8. (Specific Rival Board Setup): Give the rival the corresponding player board, all pieces of one color, and place one marker on the starting space of the progress track.[4]

9. Determine a starting player at random; the starting player marker will move between the player and the rival after each round.[4]

10. Set both players' starting scores (1 for first, 2 for second) and both publicity markers to 4.[4]

11. Create the rival action deck by shuffling the 4 basic action cards (S.1-S.4) face down; if playing on 3-star difficulty or higher, also shuffle one randomly selected advanced action card (S.5-S.14) into the deck.[4]

12. Shuffle level I, II, and III objectives face down, then assemble the objectives stack with level III at the bottom, level II in the middle, and level I on top.[4]

13. Take the number of objectives indicated by the rival's player board and reveal the top 3 tiles.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook · p.6

[2] RULEBOOK SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook · p.4 · PLAYING WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook · p.6 · SOLO WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP

[4] RULEBOOK SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook · p.22 · SOLO GAME · SETUP · Rival Action Deck · Objectives come in 3 levels: I, II, and III.

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 230 ms · ask 5098 ms · total 5332 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5332 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 22, "score": 0.047651, "snippet": "In the solo game, you will compete against a rival research institution. Your goal is to outscore your rival at the end of the game. Set up the game as you normally would for two players. Choose a difficulty and give the rival the corresponding player board. (The 1-star and 2-star difficulties both ", "headingPath": "SOLO GAME · SETUP · Rival Action Deck · Objectives come in 3 levels: I, II, and III.", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.044836, "snippet": "} Rotate the solar system before choosing your tech. } You pay 1 extra to leave asteroids. } When you tuck a card for income, you also gain that resource immediately. } The first player to pass advances the solar system at the end of their turn, before taking the end-of-round cards. Don't forget to ", "headingPath": "RULES REMINDERS · CARD TERMINOLOGY · SETUP REMINDERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.043088, "snippet": "Discard down to 4 cards if you have more than 4. Note: There's no limit in number of cards you can have in your hand during the round. Check whether you rotate the solar system. If you are the first player to pass this round, take the rotation reminder token and set it beside the stack, then rotate ", "headingPath": "MILESTONES · PASS · BETWEEN ROUNDS · Other Ways to Get Cards · Refilling the Card Row", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "PLAYER SETUP Each player selects a color and takes the corresponding pieces. Keep them near your player board. The player who last saw a UFO will be the starting player – give them the starting player marker. Your score starts at 1 if you're the first player, 2 if you're the second player, 3 if you'", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Each player selects a color and takes the corresponding pieces. Keep them near your player board. Take the starting income card in your color. Your starting resources are shown on the back of the card - 4 publicity, 4 credits, 3 energy, and 5 cards. To track publicity, place your publicity counter o", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP · STARTING RESOURCES · Increasing Income", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "Playing solo with the expansion is based on the standard solo mode, with a few changes to support organizations , quick start cards , and the new long-term objectives . Set up as a 2-player game . You can include the neutral quick start cards as recommended in the 1-2 player adjustments (see previou", "headingPath": "SOLO WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP \b", "sharpsignalDocId": 896}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031025, "snippet": "QUICK START CARDS The top half may instruct you to place an orbiter, trace, or signals. Mark those, but do not gain any effects or other benefits for doing so. The bottom half may give you starting resources, points, and other effects, usually related to what you marked above, but not always! Note: ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 896}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030777, "snippet": "Each player now controls an organization with unique powers and an asymmetric starting setup and income. Thanks to their powers, the organizations can achieve more than you may be used to from the base game. To balance that and to keep games from running too long, games with organizations are 4 roun", "headingPath": "PLAYING WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP \b", "sharpsignalDocId": 896}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP \b", "sharpsignalDocId": 896}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SOLO WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP \b", "sharpsignalDocId": 896}, {"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SOLO GAME · SETUP · Rival Action Deck · Objectives come in 3 levels: I, II, and III.", "sharpsignalDocId": 251}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 251 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 251 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 0.87934 of 2536 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 30, 2026 02:35 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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	SOLO GAME · SETUP · Rival Action Deck · Objectives come in 3 levels: I, II, and III.	p.22	0.047651 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	RULES REMINDERS · CARD TERMINOLOGY · SETUP REMINDERS	p.28	0.044836 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	MILESTONES · PASS · BETWEEN ROUNDS · Other Ways to Get Cards · Refilling the Card Row	p.19	0.043088 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)		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
#5	RULEBOOK SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	PLAYER SETUP · STARTING RESOURCES · Increasing Income	p.6	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
#6	RULEBOOK SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896)	SOLO WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP	p.6	0.032002 (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 SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896)		p.5	0.031025 (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 SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896)	PLAYING WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP	p.4	0.030777 (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 52 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 — 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 SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896)	PLAYING WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP	p.4	#8	0.030777 (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
#2	RULEBOOK SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896)	SOLO WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP	p.6	#6	0.032002 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	PLAYER SETUP · STARTING RESOURCES · Increasing Income	p.6	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	Resetting the Sector	p.13	#30	0.011236 (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 SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896)	QUICK START CARDS · ADJUSTMENTS FOR 1-2 PLAYERS · Neutral signals	p.5	#9	0.030118 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	NEUTRAL MILESTONES	p.18	#13	0.027746 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)		p.6	#4	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
#8	RULEBOOK SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	SOLO GAME · SETUP · Rival Action Deck · Objectives come in 3 levels: I, II, and III.	p.22	#1	0.047651 (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 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)		p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896)	PLAYING WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK SETI: Space Agencies — Rulebook (corpus doc 896)	SOLO WITH ORGANIZATIONS · SETUP	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — Rulebook (corpus doc 251)	SOLO GAME · SETUP · Rival Action Deck · Objectives come in 3 levels: I, II, and III.	p.22	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 230 ms · first delta 1198 ms · total 5332 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 230 ms · ask 5098 ms · gateway work 5332 ms · total 5332 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2870
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 802
tok/sec: 197.8 tok/sec — 802 output tokens in 4.055 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 48s 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 5h, checked 1s 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 177), 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.