Classic Elite Ships

The Apple II version of Elite defines 32 hulls.

For the presentation here, shapes were rendered with face normal correction enabled and vertex culling disabled. Ship stats come from the disassembly, ship names come from various sources. For more information on how the mesh data was stored and used, see the Hull Meshes page.

Num	Name	Health	Speed	Las	Msl	Bounty	Kills	Notes
1	Missile	2	44	-	-	-	0.58
2	Coriolis Station	240	0	-	6	-	-	space station
3	Escape Capsule	17	8	-	-	-	0.06	trader
4	Plate / Alloys	16	16	-	-	-	0.04
5	Cargo Cannister	17	15	-	-	-	0.04
6	Boulder	20	30	-	-	0.1 Cr	0.02
7	Asteroid	60	30	-	-	0.5 Cr	0.03
8	Splinter	20	10	-	-	-	0.04
9	Shuttle	32	8	-	-	-	0.06	trader
10	Transporter	32	10	-	-	-	0.07	trader
11	Cobra Mk III	150	28	2	3	-	0.91
12	Python	250	20	3	3	-	0.66
13	Boa	250	24	3	4	-	0.83
14	Anaconda	252	14	7	7	-	1.00	trader
15	Asteroid (Rock Hermit)	180	30	-	2	-	0.33	trader
16	Viper	140	32	2	1	-	0.10	police, hunter
17	Sidewinder	70	37	2	-	5 Cr	0.33	pirate
18	Mamba	90	30	2	2	15 Cr	0.50	pirate
19	Krait	80	30	2	-	10 Cr	0.33	pirate
20	Adder	85	24	2	-	4 Cr	0.35	pirate
21	Gecko	70	30	2	-	5.5 Cr	0.33	pirate
22	Cobra Mk I	90	26	2	2	7.5 Cr	0.66	pirate
23	Worm	30	23	1	-	-	0.20	angry, trader
24	Cobra Mk III (pirate)	150	28	2	2	17.5 Cr	1.16	pirate
25	Asp Mk II	150	40	5	1	20 Cr	1.08	pirate
26	Python (pirate)	250	20	3	3	20 Cr	1.16	pirate
27	Fer-de-Lance	160	30	2	2	-	1.25	hunter
28	Moray	100	25	2	-	5 Cr	0.75	pirate
29	Thargoid	240	39	2	6	50 Cr	2.66	pirate
30	Thargon	20	30	2	-	5 Cr	0.13
31	Constrictor	252	36	6	4	-	5.33
32	Dodecahedron "Dodo"	240	0	-	-	-	-	space station

"Health" is the amount of damage the ship can take before being destroyed. "Speed" is maximum speed; it corresponds to the "LM (Light Mach) rating in the manual. "Las" is an indication of laser power (0=no laser, 7=max). "Msl" indicates the number of missiles the hull can carry. "Bounty" is the bounty paid for destroying the ship. "KillSc" is the amount by which the Kill Score is increased.

Ship index #2 is always used for the local space station. The pointer to the Coriolis Station data is replaced with a pointer to the Dodecahedron data in appropriate systems.

C64 Differences

The ship data for the C64 version is nearly the same as the Apple II version. There are some minor differences, e.g. the Apple II versions of ships with identical designs (the Rock Hermit asteroid and the pirate versions of Cobra Mk III and Python) re-use the edge and vertex data of the previous shape, while the C64 version repeats it. The only significant difference is the addition of a new ship, the Cougar, which doesn't show up on radar.

Num	Name	Top	Side	Front	Spin	Health	Speed	Las	Msl	Bounty	Notes
32	Cougar					252	40	6	4	-

The ship must be rendered without surface normal correction because the non-convex parts are included in the main structure of the ship, and the visualization algorithm grabs the wrong thing. The mesh takes the level-of-detail edge exclusion farther than others, reducing the ship to a mere outline when seen at a distance (which seems appropriate for a stealth ship).

The Dodecahedron station becomes entry number 33.

The C64 hull data file was obtained by assembling hull_data.asm from the elite-harmless project. This was much easier than getting a copy of the game, extracting data, descrambling it, etc. You can view the disassembly or project files if you want to examine the data file more closely.