Just going to comment on this - the Defiant follows the design rules just fine, actually. The ship actually forms an arc in the plane perpendicular to the front/back axis, and that arc is capped on either end by the nacelles, which dip even lower. They have line of sight on each other below the bulk of the ship, rather than above the engineering fuselage, as most Federation ships do. It's hard to see because both the command deck and the impulse engines dip downward and cover up the gap when seen from directly in front or back.Agent Sorchus wrote:The Nacelles "Should not be more than fifty percent obstructed" as I have seen it in various fan sites.
Link here is what I have seen as the common opinion of serious fansites.So fuzzy's design is in perfect understanding of the rules. (And the rules can be broken like the Defiant for a good design anyway.)Rule #2 Warp nacelles must have at least 50% line-of-sight on each other across the hull.
Looked at this way, it's as if the Federation took the Klingon Bird of Prey/Cruiser approach with downward-angled wings tipped by nacelles, took out the wings as essentially stylistic rather than structural, and took the remaining design through the Federation-izer.
The other rules are that nacelles must come in pairs, the nacelles must be clearly visible from the front, and the bridge must be at the front/top of the ship. The Defiant meets all these.
It felt like jamming with Bruce Springsteen 
