Man, stupid rules about fictional space-ships are kinda my jam.
This is almost certainly because I was raised watching Star Trek, and as a phenomenon Star Trek is remarkably consistent with the application of its starship physics. Or at least it was up until JJ Abrams started talking to Paramount. But that's not the point here. Gene Roddenberry had rules for starships in the Trek universe, stuff like "warp nacelles come in pairs, must be visible from the front, and should have line of sight with each other." This wasn't just a rule for the federation; Gene was making a statement about the function of warp drive as a physical concept within the universe.
Why did he make these rules? I won't pretend to know exactly, but honestly probably aesthetics. Having rules like that helps define a look and feel for ships in the show, and is a quick way, when working with a team of designers, to create a coherent feel to your universe. But the offshoot of that effort is a consistent set of physics as well. Designers and fans of the show worked together to explain why these rules had to exist (warp field symmetry, bussard collector effectiveness, and warp field efficiency), such that the deeper you dive into the ships of that universe, the more it sets up around you to feel real.
And then later on, when designers for other Trek projects wanted to break these rules, they had to explain why they were doing that and what the effects would be. The Defiant's nacelles do not have line of sight with each other, for instance. That was done to increase the structural strength of the ship, but evidently it does drastically reduce the efficiency of the warp field or something like that, meaning that the Defiant is nowhere near as fast as it could be. Voyager's moving nacelles were probably designed that way just to be novel, but that introduces the concept of variable warp field geometry, meaning that not only can Voyager select a field geometry appropriate to her desired cruising velocity for maximum efficiency, but she can also move them fully into line of sight of each other to achieve extremely high top speeds.
This is the shiz I thrive on. Because of these aesthetic rules and the fictional physics they informed, you can just take a look at any ship in the Trek universe and make informed commentary on its construction. The Romulan D'Deridex Bird of Prey? Looks cool for sure, but why the crap is it 90% open space? Well, the warp nacelles are on either side of that space; it's empty so they can see each other for maximum warp field efficiency. But why not put them on pylons like Federation ships, or even other Romulan ships we see in the series? Seems like the only advantage to building it the way they did is added structural support. That's a lot of extra work and material just for additional structural support, isn't it? And so there's really only one conclusion we can draw; the D'Deridex is a warship that cares a lot about speed.
Using simply visual cues like that the creators behind Star Trek can tell us something about the people flying that ship, about what their motivations might be and what sort of things we can expect from them. Not just through pure aesthetics, like the jagged beak-like nose of the Bird of Prey, but also from a consistent application of their made-up science. That consistency helps build the world of the show and acts as a tool for storytelling and characterization throughout. And I gotta tell you, I find this tool to be incredibly effective.
It should come as no surprise then that I like making rules like this. Personally I tend to come at it from the perspective of what are the fictional physics at play here, and how would that affect the visual design of whatever I'm dealing with? But I don't think there's a wrong way to approach this, whether you want to specify why things work or how they look first and work toward the other from there. My sole point in writing this is to make sure you're very aware that if you're writing science fiction this can be an extremely effective tool in your toolbag.
Use it.
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