LMS Explorer
The LMS Explorer (alternatively written as L.M.S. Explorer) is a fictional starship in the LEGO Rock Raiders theme. The Explorer is a large ship used by the titular Rock Raiders while they explore the galaxy. In the theme's story, the ship is damaged by asteroids and its fuel supplies are drained, shown in most media to be caused by it falling into a wormhole. It ends up drifting near an alien planet that the Rock Raiders mine to collect materials to repair and power it. The Explorer was designed for the theme's tie-in video game. No parts of it were ever released in a set, although unofficial digital recreations of it have been made.
Design
The LMS Explorer was designed by artists at Data Design Interactive in 1998.[1] Certain sections of the LMS Explorer were designed and constructed at LEGO Futura using Data Design's concept renders of the ship.[2] Photographs of these LEGO models were used by Artworld UK to create a full virtual LEGO model of the ship.[1]
Though not explicitly stated in any published media, the ship prefix LMS is intended to be an abbreviation of "Lego Mining Ship". 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.[3]
Game
The Rock Raiders puzzle storybook loosely follows the story of the video game, though there is no wormhole in this version. While traveling through space on a voyage 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.[6]: 2–3 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.[6]: 4–5 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.[6]: 6 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.[6]: 26 After the Rock Raiders transport back to the Explorer too, the ship's scanner detects an alien life form aboard;[6]: 28–29 a rock monster is discovered to have stowed away aboard tbe ship.[6]: 30
In the follow-up book Race for Survival, the LMS Explorer returns to the alien planet, here called Planet U, six months after initially being stranded there.[7]: 4–5
HADU[8]
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.[9] 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.[3] 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.[9] 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.[9]
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.[9] While LeoCAD still became slow and unstable as the model became larger, he was able to finish constructing the Explorer with it.[3] He publicly revealed his recreation on Rock Raiders United on 30 September 2011, at which point the model had around 57,300 pieces.[9] 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.[3]
In 2016 Arthuriel made further improvements to the Explorer model.[10] He also designer smaller LMS Explorer models using 1:8, 1:16, and 1:32 scales.[9] 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/114.72 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.[10] The model does not include any of the ship's interior rooms.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 R.R. Slugger (29 July 2022). " Can We Fix the Tool Store? (Yes, We Can!) ~ LEGO Rock Raiders Step By Step Instructions ". YouTube.
- ↑ Yeo, Matt (ed.) (October 1999). "Behind the Scenes: Rock Raiders". LEGO Adventures!. Issue 7. Egmont Fleetway Ltd. pp. 30–33. ISSN 1465-0738.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 R.R. Slugger (2 January 2022). "How to Build the LMS Explorer from LEGO Rock Raiders! Interview with Arthuriel on 1:1 Replica!". YouTube.
- ↑ Artworld UK (11 August 1999). LEGO Rock Raiders intro FMV (Data/AVI/intro.avi). LEGO Media International.
- ↑ McPhail, Jim (13 December 1999). LEGO Rock Raiders Instruction Manual (UK FRONT, BACK, I/F & I/B COVER). LEGO Media International. Serial no. IB2G-ROC3 2299598.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Knight, Anna (1999). Rock Raiders. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 0-7894-4707-X.
- ↑ Birkinshaw, Marie (2000) Race for Survival. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 0-7894-5458-0.
- ↑ Grant, Alan (2000). Rock Raiders: High Adventure Deep Underground. LEGO Systems, Inc. ISBN 1-903276-05-5.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 Arthuriel (30 September 2011). "1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer". Rock Raiders United. Archived from the original on 25 September 2023.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Arthuriel (11 July 2023). " 1:1 L.M.S. Explorer model - The Return of the Thread as a Blog " (blog). Rock Raiders United. Archived from the original on 3 October 2023.
