That's a great way to look at it. As I suppose that particular nacelle configurations are either better for longer, slower cruises while others are designed with short burst high speed jumps in mind.
All of starship design is like that, though. Look at airplanes, there are basically two ways to make them, T-shaped or ∆-shaped. Warp-driven starships seem to come in all shapes and sizes, with little rhyme or reason about what makes one configuration better than another one. If anything, my guess would be that there's a lot of room for variation in how you build a warp nacelle, inside and out, and that determines what the rest of the ship is going to be shaped like. Long and thin, short and fat, one plane or with a second hull attached to the bottom or top, it all starts with what trade-offs are made in the engine between speed, acceleration, efficiency, cost, mass, and so on.
The # of Cylinders doesn't really matter. It's the amount of liters you displace relative to the amount of HP / Torque you can extract from the work done by the engine. Koenigsegg TFG "Tiny Friendly Giant" It has a I-3 configuration "Inline 3-cylinder". It displaces 2.0 liters and has BIG Cylinders. The engines "Dry Weight" is 154 lbs (70 kg) Yet w/o Turbo, naturally aspirated; it makes 300 hp. w/ Turbos, it goes up to 600 hp. It's Small, Light Weight, and uses some of the most advanced metallurgy & design principles. It's basically the most advanced Cylinder based ICE around. It is truly a next generation ICE design in every sense of the word.
I think you have all made the successful case for why nacelles might be in 2 or 4 set configurations and be small/medium/large relative to the ship, the warp core, and its intended usage.
Do you want fast and mobile (Porsche/Ferrari/Escort), fast and not so mobile (Mustang/Challenger/Cruiser), power (tow capacity, etc.), high cruise, low cruise, energy sipping scout, etc. Even now, I'm SERIOUSLY simplifying. So many configurations and power needs/abilities. When I was growing up, I knew a mustang would beat my 944 off the line, but the 944 had the higher top end. I'd never get into a stop-light to stop-light challenge with a pony car. Try to chase me on the highway however.... Eh, I'll let an engineer talk.
Derp.... ofcourse. Should have known. Now we know where it went since it isn't on the 2024 SOTL calender.
Well, there was a reason the Galaxy and Intrepid had small nacelles, the idea from 1987-1995 was engines got more miniaturized as the technology improved, but then the Sovereign showed up and crapped all over that idea because the powers-that-be thought long ones look better on the big screen, so now we starship fans have to make up all kinds of things to explain a real life aesthetic choice.
And Klingon battle cruiser warp nacelles are even smaller, which brings up in some fan circles the debate over whether Federation or Klingon warp technology is superior since the Empire can achieve the same warp velocities as Starfleet ships and sometimes even faster.
I was thinking another Klingons when I made by earlier response. We should probably not mention that their most commonly encountered ship doesn’t even have nacelles, and is just as fast.
Could chalk up the Crossfield-class' extra-long nacelles as a result of the Spore Drive Project. Without the spore drive, the nacelles might have been a lot shorter for all we know.