In all the history of Traveller ship designs, there are a LOT of bizarre ship images often on the tail of their equally weird deck plans. Worst of the worst is engineering. NO ONE has a clue about what the drives and engines look like so we see decks with a single tight engine block, a meandering engine and the common split engines on the same deck. Add in whether or not someone thinks there needs to be exhaust ports. There really is no evolved standard so the majority of ships look like cars and planes from movies and shows such as Wacky Races and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. I swear the ship architects take great pride in designing vessels so every one is unique even as part of the same military force (except the Aslan. You know an aslan ship when you see it). Too many ship designs seem to create the deck plans first then drape a crystaliron tarp over it an tuck in the corners.
Personally, since Mongoose Traveller considers jump as a bubble centered at the core of the ship, the Jump drive should be at the ship center. We need to decide the physics of maneuver drives. Is any reaction exhaust actually part of the drive or is the drive pulling and pushing against gravity? Are those 'exhaust ports' actually some sort of integrated external heat sinks and need to be there and demand the maneuver and/or power plant be near the hull? All this can affect the outside shape. Form follows function. The new design rules for configuration will affect the look of a ship externally too especially non-grav and special hulls. We just may have a chance to make the look of ships a little more elegant.
