Unlike modern tie-ins, Franz had the rights to the stuff he created. The Star Fleet Battles RPG exists because he leased those rights without Paramount or Gene's say so. The stuff that "discredited" Franz' work was owned entirely by Paramount and all the money coming in went to the (big Doctor Evil finger quotes here) "right" people.
Andrew Probert's believes are irreleveant. You said it yourself, it was never stated in a movie or episode, therefore it's not canon, period, end of story. What IS canon are various examples of ships not having a line of sight between the nacelles.
It's disturbing that you would take a statement that at its worst would be inaccurate or overly broad and attribute "maliciousness" to it. It is natural, not malicious, to defend one's position when challenged. I would not have made the statement if I thought it was untrue. However, to be fair, I did not perform some kind of through review of every ship in the first few seasons. My statement is my general impression rather than conclusive fact, but you have offered no convincing argument to the contrary, other than offering your own vague impressions. There are ships that have no nacelles and ships that are shown to be warp capable. Should be simple for you to cite the overlap. The Straleb is one of the vessels I addressed earlier. The script never explicitly states that it has warp capabilities. Furthermore, the fact that Okana can smuggle people from the two factions into each other's territory suggests that the two cultures are in close proximity to begin with. I find no evidence that the Batris was warp capable. It is never stated in the script for the episode ("Heart of Glory"). In fact, it was later redressed as Okana's ship, and is explicitly sublight, and since that ship has the same three engines at the back (because it's a redress), one cannot assume that those are warp engines and thus line of sight does not apply. By the way, the model used for the Batris was a recycled V freighter, so it wasn't even an original Star Trek ship design. Probert has stated it is on multiple occasions that the ship is slightly concave. I've posted a video with footage that shows the underside of the Ferengi Marauder is slightly concave. Someone even posted a picture showing it's concave. And these two 3D models of it are slightly concave: https://www.yobi3d.com/q/3D-model/Ferengi-Marauder-Full https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2153315 But if you still don't believe, here's an illustration based on the very picture @Mytran posted: (Note: Before anyone mentions it, the bump in the middle is the integrated Ferengi shuttle in the neck.)
Don't the Defiant class warp engines have direct lines of sight between them at least for the lower surfaces?
It's hard to tell. In one diagram I've seen, the warp coils don't have line of sight even if the housing does. I'm not sure if that diagram's canon, though.
Whilst I completely agree that this "rule" was just Probert's own personal one, and even then only fleetingly adhered to on screen, and has numerous counter-examples outside of that, and thus should not be taken as any sort of universally-binding concept within the fiction...it seems to me that the Ferengi marauder clearly does indeed have "minimal" line of site (and why should we think more would be needed) between its ventral glowing grilles as cited, although this isn't always discernable from every angle. I do not think it is merely some trick of perspective, as others have said. (Sorry for so many images; it helps to get an idea of how the camera is in motion): Rather, it seems to me the trick of perspective works the opposite way, with the geometry in question being obscured and concealed as the camera moves "up behind" the vessel: This is not the original filming model itself, but a replica supposedly based on "a direct pull...repaired to mold" of it; you can see the slight "drooping" of the "wingtips": FWIW, the Defiant is another case where various physical and CGI models have subtly different proportions and curvatures, I know that much. It's possible some have it and some don't, but I don't know. (I haven't checked into it any further as yet.)
@The Mighty Monkey of Mim, it's amazing how many images of the underside of that ship you found. I could barely find anything on Google Image Search.
Gee, thanks fellas! The screencaps are just from TrekCore (not hosted on their space here, of course) though. Great resource.
Even if you look at only TOS by itself, Roddenberry's "line of sight" rule falls apart. Just look at the nacelles on the Class F Shuttlecraft.
The line of sight "rule" wasn't Roddenberry's. It was Probert's. Roddenberry just said they had to be in pairs.
You're right about the "at least 50% line of sight" rule being Probert's (I had forgotten those). At least one can be directly attributed to Roddenberry (nacelle pairs). Here they all are . Many of them do seem to coincide with FJ's designs in the SFTM, all of which are cited in the article. I personally would like to believe that Roddenberry came up with most of them. He was pissed about FJ's stuff being out-of-license (didn't get his vig) and treated TAS in largely the same way.
http://www.trekplace.com/franzjoseph.html Franz Joseph's works were not out-of-license, though. Roddenberry's beef was that his and Majel's Lincoln Enterprises didn't get to be the ones to publish them, because despite initial enthusiastic support and amazement at the quality of FJ's drawings, after they failed to come to a publishing agreement FJ ended up dealing with Paramount (who really owned the merchandising rights for Trek) directly and reaching an agreement to have them published through Ballantine, and they allowed FJ to copyright his original work in his own name. The end result was that Roddenberry got nothing out of any of it. So it was mostly about money. Shock and surprise! -MMoM
Thank you for clarifying that - quite right. I think what my brain was registering that it was out of Roddenberry's license (as opposed to Paramount or whoever was the major corporation holding the main license at the time), meaning out of his control = he gets no money. My cranial short-hand was getting in the way of accurate writing, as usual. Your explanation is definitely more precise.