"4. STATUS PHASE

2. Ready Upgrade Cards: Rotate each exhausted card with a recur icon (or no icon) to its readied position. If players have exhausted cards with a non-recur icon they take turns, starting with the first player, choosing one card to ready and paying that card’s cost, until one player has no more cards to ready." (p. 54)

How does this work?

If both players have 1 upgrade card with a non-recur icon, can only the first player ready his card? According to the last page of the Rules Reference Guide, the back-and-forth stops as soon as one player (the one with initiative) has readied his or her card and has no more card to ready?

What if the first player has 1 upgrade card with a non-recur icon and the other player has a multitude of such cards. Can the second player ready none of them?

Well, I was confused by the short version of the game round rules on the last page of the RRG. I re-read the rules on page 15...

"Some upgrade cards are marked with a non-recur (q)icon next to their name. These cards do not ready during the Status Phase unless the owning player pays the cost to ready that card.

If both players can pay to ready cards during the Status Phase, they take turns readying one card at a time, starting with the first player, until one player has no more cards to ready." (p. 15)

Obviously the players just stop taking turns to ready their upgrade cards as soon as one of them has no more. And then the other player just continues.

Yup, the game will always GIVE the player a chance to take their turn, even if they are not able to DO anything. But both players each get a chance to ready their upgrades.