The placement of components means nothing. Its mainly cosmetic.
The firing points are set in specific locations. The ship will fire at its target using the closest firing point within that firing arc. SO if the ship is closer to the read, and within the rear gun arc, the rear gun will fire.
Note that the at times ships do fire through themselves, this is a bug from what I am told. So I tended to try and keep the firing arcs from having angles into the ships. However with the Feds, they still do it and I will need to add more firing points to the bottom of the saucers to hopefully stop this from happening.
Thank you Randal for posting, it is good to read posts that give feed back on the firing arcs and combat characteristics of the set. PS, the Romulans are almost done.
