LMS Explorer

The LMS Explorer in the LEGO Rock Raiders video game's opening scene

The LMS Explorer (alternatively written as L.M.S. Explorer) is a fictional starship in the LEGO Rock Raiders theme. The ship was designed by artists at Data Design Interactive and model builders at LEGO Futura for the LEGO Rock Raiders tie-in video game. It appears in the game's full-motion video sequences and is mentioned frequently during gameplay. Alternate designs for the ship are featured in Rock Raiders books.

The Explorer is a large mining ship used by the titular Rock Raiders while they explore the galaxy. In the theme's story, the ship is damaged by asteroids and knocked off-course or into a wormhole, depending on the story. Without enough power to get home, the Rock Raiders are forced to mine a nearby planet for power crystals to refuel the Explorer. No parts of the ship were ever released in a set, although unofficial digital recreations of it have been made.

Development

Sections of Explorer were built at Futura and used as references for Artworld's virtual model

The LMS Explorer was designed by artists at Data Design Interactive in early 1998. Certain sections of the LMS Explorer were designed and constructed at LEGO Futura in May 1998 using Data Design's concept renders of the ship. Photographs of these LEGO models were then used by Artworld UK to create a full virtual LEGO model of the ship.

Though not explicitly stated in any published media, the ship prefix LMS is thought to be an abbreviation of "Lego Mining Ship", a term used to describe the ship in earlier design documents before "huge mining ship" was used instead.^{[citation needed]} This prefix is based on actual ship prefixes such as HMS (Her/His Majesty's Ship) and RMS (Royal Mail Ship). Some LEGO Rock Raiders comics refer to the Explorer as the HMS Explorer.

• LMS Explorer model photographs
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  Bridge interior

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  Bridge interior

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  Bridge window exterior

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  Bridge exterior

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  Slice profile

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  Slice side view

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  Slice details

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  Front overview

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  Front from above

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  Front interior structure

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  Bridge door

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  Door sliding open

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  Model construction

Game

The LEGO Rock Raiders game instruction manual contains a short backstory for the events leading up to the game. The LMS Explorer is on its way to return the Rock Raiders home after a long expedition through the galaxy's outer rim. The ship sails into an asteroid field where is is bombarded, causing damage to its shield. The ship's sensors detect a large wormhole in the centre of the asteroid field. Without enough power to escape its pull, LMS Explorer falls into the wormhole, emerging out the other end in an alien galaxy across the universe. Chief sets a course for the nearest planet, hoping that the ship's emergency power will last long enough to reach it. The Explorer requires emergency repairs and to restock its supply of Energy Crystals for power. A geological scan of the planet reveals rich deposits of Energy Crystals under its surface, which the Rock Raiders are sent down to mine for.

The game's intro FMV sequence shows a full model of LMS Explorer. The ship can be seen again in both outro cutscenes.

An earlier extended version of the intro video included on some LEGO Software Demo CDs features additional shots of Explorer.

Print

Explorer

Artworld's LMS Explorer model can be seen in two of the Rock Raiders comics in LEGO Adventures! magazine.

The Rock Raiders puzzle storybook loosely follows the story of the video game, though there is no wormhole in this version. The LMS Explorer in this book is only seen from the inside, which uses a unique model by artist Roger Harris. The interior used is a large hallway with windows looking into space on either side.

While travelling home, the LMS Explorer is struck by a large asteroid, damaging it and sending it off-course. Without enough power crystals to continue back on course, the Explorer becomes stranded in orbit around an uncharted planet. The Rock Raiders require LEGO ore to repair the physical damage to the Explorer and power crystals to refuel it; deposits of both materials are detected on the planet. The LMS Explorer has only thirty-seven units of power remaining upon its arrival at the planet. The ship requires eleven units of power to continue operations, leaving twenty-six units for transporting a team of Rock Raiders down to the planet. The ship's transporter requires three units of power for each of the five Rock Raiders (fifteen total), one unit for equipment for each Rock Raider (five total), and six units to transport down all vehicles. Five Rock Raiders, led by Docs, are transported down to the surface of the planet, where they must use the Tunnel Transport to travel underground to its sub-surface. After the team finds a pile of power crystals behind a layer of granite boulders, the Explorer runs out of power, and the Rock Raiders must repair the teleport platform (which was damaged during mining) so that they can send the collected power crystals and LEGO ore up to the ship. After the Rock Raiders transport back to the Explorer too, the ship's scanner detects an alien life form aboard; a rock monster is discovered to have stowed away aboard tbe ship.

In the book Race for Survival, the LMS Explorer returns to the alien planet, here called Planet U, six months after initially being stranded there. Axle has gone down to the planet to mine when he is caught in a tremor. Sparks is aboard the LMS Explorer monitoring the radio and thinking about the Explorer's first visit to Planet U when Axle radios the ship for help.

The comic book Rock Raiders: High Adventure Deep Underground uses a unique LMS Explorer model. The book follows the plot of the game's cutscenes, including the wormhole.

Recreation

While no physical model of the LMS Explorer was ever produced aside from sections built at Futura, several unofficial recreations have been constructed or attempted, the most well-known one being Arthuriel's 2011 1:1 scale digital model. The project began when Arthuriel played LEGO Rock Raiders in December 2010 and wondered if anyone had recreated a full-scale LEGO model of the LMS Explorer from the game's FMV sequences. He searched online, discovering and joining the site Rock Raiders United in the process, but determined that no 1:1 scale recreations existed at the time. He decided to make his own recreation and began constructing it in the CAD program LEGO Digital Designer. Due to the Explorer's size he found it difficult to make out some of the details; he rewatched the intro and outro FMV scenes multiple times trying to determine exactly which pieces were used in the ship. While LEGO Digital Designer was initially easy for him to use, he ran into issues with certain pieces being unavailable in the program. After a month of development, when the model had reached around 16,000 pieces, LEGO Digital Designer started crashing due to the large number of pieces being displayed. Changing the program's graphics settings to the lowest options allowed him to continue to around 18,000 pieces, at which point it crashed after each piece added.

Arthuriel decided to switch to a different LEGO CAD program, LeoCAD. He was unable to convert the LDD model for use in LeoCAD and had to start over, which let him correct mistakes. While LeoCAD still became slow and unstable as the model became larger, he was able to finish constructing the Explorer with it. He publicly revealed his recreation on Rock Raiders United on 30 September 2011, at which point the model had around 57,300 pieces. Many of the colours in the model were initially incorrect due to the dark lighting in the game's intro FMV; he was able to fix this using MLCAD.

In 2016 Arthuriel made further improvements to the Explorer model. He also designer smaller LMS Explorer models using 1:8, 1:16, and 1:32 scales. As of 2023, Arthuriel's LMS Explorer recreation is 962.4 studs (769.9 cm, 303.1 in) long, 130 studs (104 cm, 41 in) wide, and 143.4 studs/119.5 bricks (114.7 cm, 45.2 in) high. The hull contains 58,827 pieces. The project took around 11 months to complete, including the additional changes made in 2016. The model does not include any of the ship's interior rooms.