There is no rule.
But after playing this game for two years, when there is certain behavior that always happens.
When it change without mentioning it in patch notes, i take it as a bug or mischevious attempt of devs to achieve something that i certainly don’t appreciate.
No, i heard stories that you can put auto target module on the high slot, but I personally didn’t notice the difference. Perhaps there is a slight difference in that, but i never had aggro problems on forsaken hub assuming i fallow the rule mentioned in the main post.
I tested fits with guns, nos, neut, disrupts ect.
Hell, I even rat in eos with boost modules, and whether they are on or off. Fitted or not.
There is no difference.
The main problem is to eliminate VNI as a semi afk, easy obtainable source of income.
While rorqual requires injectors for most of the new players.
Also, people who have rorquals tend to have more accounts than those who play with VNI.
CCP attempted to gain new players but it failed. So now they want to squeeze current player base as much as they can.