[The Hecate] is not a streamlined/nautical design like the Orion
Wait wait wait. The Orion? Streamlined? That flying brick?
Say what you will about the Orion, but it is not "streamlined."
It's a fore-to-aft structure, as opposed to a vertical one. The Orion looks like a combatant, the Hecate looks like a mobile base.
The Hecate is still longer on its length than its height, so, no, it's not taller than it is long. Ergo, it's
not a vertical structure by definition. As as for the Hecate "looking like a mobile base," that's completely subjective. It looks like a spaceship to me. A really boxy spaceship, but a spaceship nonetheless. What makes the difference between a mobile "space base" and a spacefaring command ship? Both move, both send commands to the rest of its fleet, and both function in space. They way the two "look" has nothing to do with all that. Isn't the difference between the two academic?
Hell, just take a look at the
Tohoku-class Alliance cruiser from Firefly. Now
that is a ship that is not only taller than it is long (by a significant margin) but it even looks like a city block. From a subjective viewpoint (namely mine), that looks to me like a mobile command base precisely because it looks like a bunch of city skyrise buildings in space. But in universe, it's never referred to as anything but a navy cruiser, namely a
ship rather than a mobile base.
As for the Orion being "streamlined," let us properly examine the definition of the word "streamlined":
design or provide with a form that presents very little resistance to a flow of air or water, increasing speed and ease of movement. Similar:
aerodynamic
smooth
sleek
trim
elegant
graceful
Say what you will, but the words "smooth" or "sleek" or especially "aerodynamic" objectively do not apply to a design filled with hard right-angles like the Orion.
(The fact that spaceships objectively don't need to be aerodynamic in the airless void of space is irrelevant. Some spaceships like the GTF Herc II and the GTF Perseus have smoother lines because they look cooler that way, but they don't need to be that way to move faster because of the simple fact that space is not a medium, it's literally nothing. Streamlining doesn't help you move faster through the void of space. In fiction, it's purely for
Rule of Cool.)