Rick Sternbach should've been asked to blueprint the Defiant back in 1994, like he fleshed out the Enterprise-E in 1996, since I doubt anyone else could've planned out the tech, aside from Doug Drexler who was a scenic artist at the time. It's not Doug's fault; he did a fair job with the MSD and deck plans later on, and we must accept that layout as the basis because it kept showing up onscreen, but the only way to do it really well was to pay close attention to every single episode produced until then (late season three or so), and of course, to keep sending script guidance to writers, like Rick and Mike Okuda did on TNG.
Also, the Ent-E MSD appears to show the right deck count (23 or 24, Rick established 23), although their layout is inconsistent with Rick's ten-footer construction blueprints. The latter may have been drawn up closer to post-production, while the MSD had to be available for shooting. A non-final layout would also explain the original errors introduced in the dialogue (24 decks, Deck 26), but not the later Deck 29.
Actually, I find that tequila allows me to stay somewhat sharper than beer or wine. Not to say that there's any kind of state dependency going on, but I get some really interesting techy ideas on blended margaritas.
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