My Elite Cobra Mk III Classic

[Lone_Puppy]

An old fan of the game Elite, I thought it would be good to build the classic versions of the ships. In particular, the flag ship Cobra Mk III.

So, here it is. I built it in the guise of the original classic version as you would have seen on the British computer the BBC. Elite is one of the original procedural games.

Oh yeah, when close to finishing this ship I thought, "Oops, I should have looked up the dimensions". So I checked them out and as it turns out I fluked the dimensions. It's almost exactly the ones mentioned on this Wiki 65x30x130.


My main reference for building this ship was the following pics.
http://orig09.deviantart.net/a613/f/2007/309/f/1/cobra_mk_iii_by_jonbluestone.png
http://www.dream-ware.co.uk/assets/images/berihn//ships/berihn-elite-frontier-cobra3-section.gif

Which is why the core is where it is.

You can download and play with it yourself now.
Elite Cobra Mk III Classic

 

[jayman38]

She's perfect! In keeping with it's old-fashioned feel, the hull should never, ever be wedged.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

She's perfect! In keeping with it's old-fashioned feel, the hull should never, ever be wedged.

Hey thanks jayman38. Much appreciated!

It took me the day before yesterday to work out the frame, but last night I converted the frame to lights and filled in the panels. I wasn't sure how it would work, but it seemed to look ok.

The whole thing is scratch built block by block.

 

[0ldSkull]

That's awesome! Can't say it's what I expected when I clicked on this thread.
Of course now you'll need a rotating Coriolis station to park it in...

 

[Lone_Puppy]

That's awesome! Can't say it's what I expected when I clicked on this thread.
Of course now you'll need a rotating Coriolis station to park it in...

Lol! You're right. I forgot about the stations. I was wondering how to make the Asp with it's tricky shapes/angles and the Anaconda with it's wobble as it flies.

 

[CyborgBadger]

Ship looks perfect when flying around, exactly like original game. Please do a police Viper. (Actually I may as well do one myself). A Coriolis station would be a great addition too.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

The Viper is my 2nd favourite and I was planning to make one. I would be most interested to see your interpretation!
I found the dimensions for them on Wiki's, after building the thing. Lol.

It would be cool to have a full set of them! I've also experimented with skinning the Cobra different ways to colour it like Frontier. kinda makes the ridges more noticeable, but it's not too bad. I'm trying to figure out how to smooth it better with slabs and wedges.
[DOUBLEPOST=1457387006,1457386541][/DOUBLEPOST]

The Viper is my 2nd favourite and I was planning to make one. I would be most interested to see your interpretation!
I found the dimensions for them on Wiki's, after building the thing. Lol.

It would be cool to have a full set of them! I've also experimented with skinning the Cobra different ways to colour it like Frontier. kinda makes the ridges more noticeable, but it's not too bad. I'm trying to figure out how to smooth it better with slabs and wedges.

Oh yeah, I use to own an Amstrad 664 when I was a teenager. It was the first computer I owned that could play Elite. That version had Thargoids with alien items. You could jam your hyperdrive to drop out into E-space to take them on. I got rich quick selling alien items.

At high school I was a tech drawing student, so I used my skills to make cardboard models of all the ships. I also designed and built my own ship using the same kind of geometric methodology. Hmm.... I wonder what happened to those old things?

Then in later years I had the fortune to get Elite and then Frontier on PC. Massive galaxies on a floppy disk. It use to blow my mind the vastness of these games. Anyway, Frontier is where I experimented with owning an 8 man crewed ship. Unfortunately, they mutinied and flew off without me.

I'm tempted to go nuts making these, but time will tell.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Sadly, I've done some more research into the dimensions and my version is a wee bit over sized. Actually really over-sized.

The correct dimensions are 65 x 30 x 130 feet, which is roughly 20 x 10 x 40 Metres. I rounded up, because the conversion would be 19.812 x 9.144 x 39.624 Metres.

I found an original manual and the measurements are old English measurements and the dimensions are in feet, not metres. Plus the cargo capacity is measured in Cubic Tons/Tonnes, which is also no longer used in the UK, but may still be used in the US.

So, I've thought about it and I'm going to see if I can make the Cobra in it's correct dimensions to see whether it's viable as a Starmade ship.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I've built a Viper and Cobra to the correct scale and they're quite small compared to my first Cobra build.
Oh, in the over sized version and I fixed the missing block and added a few details that I missed the first time round. The 2 triangles on the rear tips and the antenna in the front.

When using the dimensions for the Viper, I found it just doesn't look right. I think they just threw those dimension in without actually measuring an actual model of the ship. Something went wrong somewhere. Anyway, the Viper just doesn't look right and I'm imbarrased to even upload it to the content section.

On the plus side, the ships are zippy and look good in a fleet.
If you want the scale build of the Viper let me know and I will upload it.

Here are a few pics of them ships along side each other.