But they DON'T all use the same layout! Vulcans prefer a choleopteric design, where the warp manifold is in a ring around the ship. Klingons use warp arrays, along the "wings" of their ships. Andorians use a single column design, low-profile from the front. Romulans use singularity engines!

📌

And the Orions, that we saw in SNW's "Those Old Scientists" have yet one more design, a bunch of small nodes arranged as two concentric rings

Q flaps real hard and stares in the windows to fuck with them all!

👏👏📌

Humans did originally try to use the Vulcan design - the UESP Enterprise, which we see a model of in the D's ready room, was an early warp capable human ship... which makes sense, because the Vulcans were guiding us down their own preferred engineering paths.

I love it when you do these threads.

Romulans use singularity-based reactors, where the Federation uses dilithium-mediated matter/antimatter reactors. They use spacewarp drives for the actual getting around, with twin nacelles flanking a central longitudinal body. So a bit like a cross between Vulcan designs and Federation ones.

To say nothing of the Borg...

You're right, but something about the design language strikes me as too similar. I especially hate the monocultures ST writers seem to create. I really liked the designs of the Klingons in Undiscovered Country, showing that they are just as varied as humans are.

Klingon designed ships have two nacelles. Romulan ships, at least the TNG versions have two nacelles. The nacelles aren't necessarily the issue as an in universe reason could be that they are more efficient, but it also bugs me that the general design language is the same across the board.