An overstatement, but not by much. By the time you have stood in the room, worked out what the sightlines forgive, found which positions can actually be reached during an interval and where the followspot operator can physically sit, most of the decisions are already constrained.
Designers who skip the recce and draft from a ground plan produce plots that are correct and unusable. The plan does not tell you that the boom position fouls a fire door, or that the get-in is up two flights, or that the house has a rake steep enough that a shin buster at the usual height will be in the front row’s eyeline.
Throw distances, obviously. But also: where the power is, how long the longest cable run is, which positions need a tallescope and how long it takes to move it, and what time the building actually opens as opposed to what time you were told.
That is genuinely enough to start a conversation. Dates and budget help, but they are not the first question — the first question is what the room is being asked to do.