One of the things that I appreciate about both the ring and the engines is that they give the ship a profile that reads in three dimensions. The saucer alone tends to fill the frame at certain angles, but coming head-on or receding it tends to flatten out and disappear a bit.
We avoided engines that stood away from the saucer for a long time because saucer + outboard engines = Starfleet. But
Vektor has made this version work.