The Five Actions

Installation, Transmission, Modulation, Funding and Supply, then how Patents work.

Your turn

Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player takes exactly one action: Installation, Transmission, Modulation, Funding or Supply. The first player never changes.

Installation

Cost: an Action tile from the Installation column, plus the dollars on any empty spaces up to the chosen box.

Put your next Wireless Station — always the lowest one left on your board — on a Location orthogonally adjacent to a Location where you already have a station or a Signal token.

• Basic Action: the station goes Unmodulated side up .
• Advanced Action: it goes Modulated side up .

You may have only one station per Location, and none on an ocean space.

Then:

1. Gain the Location’s bonus if you have no Signal token there yet.
2. Move the 2 lowest Signal tokens of the Progress track matching the Location’s reward icon to your Ready area (fewer if the track has fewer).
3. If the Location held no other piece at all (anybody’s), move 1 more Signal token from the same track.

Building on a Location where you already have a Signal token is allowed: you take the 2 Signal tokens but no bonus (you had it already).

Transmission

Cost: an Action tile from the Transmission column, plus the dollars up to the box.

Choose one of your Unmodulated stations and put 2 Signal tokens from your Ready area on the next 2 Locations along one line from it. Gain the bonus of each Location where you had no piece yet.

• Basic Action only if both Locations are empty (no station or Signal token of anyone).
• Advanced Action if at least one of them is occupied.

You need 2 Signal tokens in your Ready area even if only one can be placed. Each player may have at most 2 pieces on a Location: one station and one Signal token.

Placing Signal tokens

The two tokens follow the same line from the station, horizontally or vertically. The printed line is not always straight, but you keep following it: you may not turn a corner or send one token one way and the other another way (Patents are the exception).

Lost signal

When the line ends at a red arrow, the signal leaves the playable area: a token that cannot be placed is returned to the box.

V connections

Where the same line enters and leaves a Location on the same side, the signal may not go in and straight back out that side in one turn — no zigzag.

Modulation

Cost: an Action tile from the Modulation column, plus the dollars up to the box.

Exactly like Transmission, but from one of your Modulated stations . You also move your marker 1 space on the Permanent Links track and take the immediate bonus above the new space.

Funding

Cost: an Action tile from the Funding column, plus the dollars up to the box, and one Credit token of your choice from your board placed on an empty space of the Credit area (left to right in any row). The “3+” spaces are used only with 3–4 players, the “4” spaces only with 4.

1. Tycoon: count your active Tycoons — on your boards and in the Credit area. With at least one, take a face-up Tycoon tile of level up to that number (1 Tycoon: level 1; 2: level 1 or 2; and so on). You may instead take the top face-down tile of a stack, but you must keep it. Put the Tycoon tile on the bottom space of the column its icon shows and push the other tiles up. Refill the display.
2. Money: gain $2 plus $1 per active Tycoon — the tile you just took already counts.

Supply

Cost: one Credit token of your choice placed in the Credit area — no Action tile.

1. Action tiles: take 2 tiles from your supply (Technology tiles included) and put them in their columns, plus 1 more for each active Factory — on Tycoon tiles, next to a Flag in your Nations column, and one per Credit token of yours in a Factory row of the Credit area.
2. Patent: if you have more active Scientists than Patents (counted the same way), take a Patent tile and put it above the matching column, outside your board. Your first Patent needs 1 Scientist, the second 2, and so on.

Only one Patent may wait above a column at a time, and you may own only one Patent of each type per level.

Patents

A Patent waiting above a column is a third Action Box: to use it, cover or pay for every space up to it, as usual. The first time you use it, choose side A or B and slide it onto the column’s Basic Action Box if it shows two icons, or onto the Advanced Action Box if it shows one. That choice is final: from then on it replaces that box’s action.

Each activated Patent gives its icons at the end; a Patent still waiting above a column gives none. What each Patent does is in Cards & Components: placing a station one space further, placing signals in other patterns, or taking an Action tile. A Patent pattern shows which spaces are adjacent, not a direction — turn or mirror it as you like. Being first on a Location and moving on the Permanent Links track work as usual.