Colonial Chrome

On the 720 there is a lot of debate about engine position. Are they in the front "paddles" or in the rear between the airlocks? Or both?

Or rear engine front manuvering thruster? (I think that is possible)

Any thoughts?

The ion engines are located in the forward flippers, as might be implied by there being airlocks in the aft tubes, and an engines monitor station just inboard of each flipper.

The hyperdrive, as almost always, is located amidships below the deck.

With the ion engines in the 'flippers', I would imagine that would produce a highly maneuverable ship. In essence, the thrust of the engines are already 'pre-vectored,' so simply cutting the thrust to one or the other would turn the ship extremely rapidly.

Certainly a far cry from the steriotypical image of this ship as 'sluggish.' Perhaps 'clumsy' might be more accurate, since I imagine that someone unused to such a configuration might have real trouble learing how to handle it. But once you do get it down...

The ships computer should be able to compensate for the instability though. The "low" manuvering score in the stats might be indicative that though the ship can spin laterally (by shifting thrust from one side to another) the roll rate might be really bad.

Or the computer just over compensates by killing thrust and overbalancing thrust. Thus cancelling out any benafits whatsoever. (my Vote)

Are the engins ducted to fire toward the rear or do they burn in the diagonal that the fins are facing?

How much "electro-magnetic thust vectoring" can we expect out of a stock configuration?

Probably not much.