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Instruments and Stations
Players get their information from instruments. All mod commands are for operators.
Geologist's Hammer (2 iron ingots, 2 sticks). Right-click rock to see its class (volcanic, plutonic, sedimentary, metamorphic), how it formed and the layers under it in real metres. Hit an ore mineral to prospect for the deposit nearby (see Rocks, Ores and Fossils).
Fault Compass (4 copper ingots, amethyst shard). Shows your plate, its speed (cm a year) and direction, and the nearest boundary: its type, direction, distance, how fast it closes or opens and how fast it shears. It tells you whether the fault is locked (storing strain) or creeping. In a trench across a fault it reads the fault's past (see Earthquakes).
Core Drill. Hold it on the ground for two seconds and it drills 64 blocks. You get a Core Sample listing each layer with its real thickness, each deposit by how it formed, the water table and the soil moisture. A cave shows as a gap. A core through a large ore body (from 0.11.3) also says where the body starts and ends and how much of it is ore. Right-click the sample to read it again.
Geothermal Probe. Reads the heat flow (°C per km) and how well the ground suits a volcano, a geyser field or a hot spring. It tells you whether a well here would reach a hot water reservoir, how deep, and what a turbine on it would give; if the well would pay, steam rises from the ground. It also points to the nearest hot ground and reads soil water and groundwater depth. Near a volcano it reads the ground swelling and warns of carbon dioxide.
Geological Map (map, amethyst shard, copper ingot). It fills in as you carry it:
- rock classes: red volcanic, pink granite, purple metamorphic, yellow sandstone, grey shale and chert, light blue limestone and marble, green ophiolite, sand for alluvium;
- faults as coloured lines (orange collision, red subduction, cyan rift, magenta transform), with arrows for plate motion and hatching over active fault zones;
- large volcanoes and landmark mountains marked.
It can be framed and copied.
Right-click it to open the drum:
- the last minute of paper in three components (vertical, north-south, east-west);
- where the station is and how noisy it is;
- a log with the newest quake at the bottom.
From each quake it reads the distance (from the S minus P time), the magnitude and the direction of the first motion. Sneak and click to post the log in chat. Click with paper to print it as a book, or with a blank map to print the drum trace.
- It records quakes up to 4,000 blocks away, even ones you do not feel. On rock, underground and away from footsteps it hears the smallest ones.
- It logs volcanic swarms and eruptions separately and keeps two months of records.
- The siren sounds for M6 and up, a chime for smaller quakes. Its redstone signal is full through a warning, and as strong as the shaking while the ground shakes.
Seismic network: three or more seismographs that record the same quake work out where it was, and how deep if it was among them. Once two stations catch the first wave, everyone about to be shaken hard gets a countdown.
There are six instruments, each its own block: Barometer (pressure and its 3-hour trend), Anemometer (wind in knots and its direction; the cups spin), Hygrometer, Rain Gauge (mm an hour and the day's total), Thermometer and Soil Moisture Probe. Right-click to read one, or read it with a comparator (0 to 15).
A Weather Station Terminal within 12 blocks keeps a day's record. Its tabs are Now, Charts, Forecast, Fields and Stations:
- the forecast covers three days: rough with a barometer alone, good with all six instruments;
- with a soil probe it advises on fields: when to water, when to wait for rain, frost, and dry days for the harvest.
Every terminal and seismograph joins one network. Whoever built a station, or an operator, can name it on its own screen. A terminal's Stations tab lists them all on a map and opens any of them from afar: a seismograph live, a terminal as it last read.
- Tiltmeter: ground tilt in microradians, rising toward the volcano.
- GPS Station: plate drift in mm a year, and how many centimetres the volcano has lifted the ground.
- Gas Meter: CO₂ and SO₂ in ppm.
Each reads the volcano's alert level: GREEN normal, YELLOW restless, ORANGE eruption likely, RED erupting or about to. The seismograph also keeps an hourly volcano record: swelling, swarm count, and whether it is rising.
The Geological Field Guide (book + copper ingot) has 52 pages in ten chapters, from the landscape to the commands.
The Field Geology advancement tab has 18 advancements: Field Geology, Reading the Rocks, Follow the Pyrite, Core Sample, Struck Ore, On the Line, On the Paper, Felt It, The Big One, Quicksand, Slope Failure, Hot Ground, Earth Power, Old Faithful, Fire Mountain, Geological Survey, Roof of the World and Three Summits.
See also: Earthquakes, Weather, Volcanoes.