Ruling — Among the Stars

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Among the Starsbg-110277-en-1e

For the Non-Aggressive Mode, the setup is as follows:

1. Separate all Basic Location Cards from the Special Location Cards.[1]

2. If playing a 3-player game, remove the Basic Location Cards with the number '4' in the lower, right-hand corner and place them back in the box.[1]

3. Separate Power Reactor Cards to form a new deck.[1]

4. Without looking at the cards, draw 6 Special Location Cards per player and add them to the Basic Location Cards (e.g., 18 for a 3-player game; 24 for a 4-player game) to form the Location Deck.[1]

5. Each player takes a Player Marker and places it on the Score Board at 0.[1]

6. Place the Score Board on the table where it is easily seen by all players.[1]

7. Each player takes a Main Reactor Card and places it on the table in front of them with 2 Energy Cubes on it.[1]

8. Place the remaining Credits and Energy Cubes in the center of the table to form the Supply.[1]

9. Each player chooses a race and takes the corresponding tile with its Racial Ability.[1]

10. Shuffle the Objective Cards and randomly draw as many Objectives as there are players, placing them face up on the table.[1]

Variants:

* All-in Variant: Shuffle all Location Cards (basic and special) together to create the Location Deck, then set aside the bottom 20 cards without looking at them to serve as unused Special Locations.[2]

* 2-Player Setup: Two players sit opposite each other with two "virtual" players sitting between them.[3] For each virtual player, draw 6 cards from the Location Deck (without looking) and place them in a pile where that virtual player would be.[3] Only 2 Objective Cards are drawn.[3]

* Aggressive Mode: Use 12 Conflict Cards.[3] (Note: The rules specify how to integrate these during the 2nd round, rather than during initial setup).[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.7 · Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant

[3] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.6 · Game End

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 222 ms · ask 4367 ms · total 4594 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4594 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "The game can be played in two modes: Aggressive and Non-Aggressive. The core game is the Non-Aggressive Mode. The Aggressive Mode is for players who want more direct confrontation in their game. What follows are the rules for the Non-Aggressive Mode. It is suggested you play a few Non-Aggressive gam", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "These are a couple of variants that we have thought of which you can try in your games. Instead of the normal setup, take all the Location Cards (both basic and special) and shuffle them together. This will be the Location Deck from which you will draw. Take the bottom 20 cards from that Deck (witho", "headingPath": "Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "For the Aggressive Mode, you will need the 12 Conflict Cards. Play the 1st round the same as in the Non-Aggressive Mode. Then, before drawing any cards for the 2nd round, shuffle as many Conflict Cards as 3 times the number of players into the Location Deck (e.g. 9 in a 3-player game, randomly chose", "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The player responsible for tracking the score moves the Turn Marker to the correct year. The symbol around each year shows the direction in which the cards are going to be handed from player to player (clockwise or counter-clockwise) and the Turn Marker should be flipped accordingly. Every round con", "headingPath": "Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "It is the 3rd turn of the 1st round. Sandra's Station, looks like this: The card she has selected is 'Holographic Display Area', and she wants to build it. In order to do so, she must pay the cost and place it adjacent to one existing location: The \"Holographic Display Area\" location card A new loca", "headingPath": "Build Location", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "You will need to build Power Reactors in order to pay the energy requirement for other locations. In order to build a Power Reactor, discard your selected card (after revealing it simultaneously with the other players), pay its cost (1 credit), take a Power Reactor card from the Power Reactor Deck, ", "headingPath": "Build Power Reactor", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "When the 4th round ends, the game is over. To calculate his final score, every player should do the following:  Check if any Objectives are met, and gain the bonus VPs they provide (only if you play with Objectives).  Check all the cards in his Space Station with abilities in yellow boxes for any ", "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "He then gives the remaining cards to his opponent. If done correctly, all the players (both actual and virtual) should have the same number of cards in front of them each turn. Any racial ability that allows a player to interact with the hands of the other players may be used on the virtual players'", "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 978 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 978 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 0.89211 of 1483 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Nov 14, 2026 03:56 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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)		p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant	p.7	0.048131 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	0.047379 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location	p.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))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Build Location	p.4	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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Build Power Reactor	p.4	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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.5	0.029877 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	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 20 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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant	p.7	#2	0.048131 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Playing Order · Can I pay the cost in Energy using Energy Cubes from more than one Power Reactor? · In the setup shown in this diagram, what is the distance between locations A and B? 2 or 4? · Card / Race Specific Questions	p.8	#9	0.029514 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	#3	0.047379 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	#8	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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.5	#7	0.029877 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location	p.3	#4	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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview	p.2	#11	0.014286 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)		p.2	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 222 ms · first delta 2224 ms · total 4594 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 222 ms · ask 4367 ms · gateway work 4594 ms · total 4594 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3378
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 454
tok/sec: 200.6 tok/sec — 454 output tokens in 2.263 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 49s 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 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 908), 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.