Propellors should require clearance instead of a frontal position

[Nanako]

First of all i will say that it is really wierd that our propellers are forced to face forward. Surely they provide propulsion by pushing air, and they'd want to push that air away from the city, not into it. Fans are generally reversible anyways, so i really don't see why we can't put them on the back of the city

But regardless:
Right now, propellors have to have nothing infront of them, This makes a certain kind of sense, you dont want to block the airflow. But the implementation is too absolute. They cannot have anything infront of them AT ALL, for the whole city, and if you build a path that is aligned with their direction of flow and infront of them, they get teleported up to be infront of it.

But this has some odd consequences, see here: https://i.imgur.com/LM84dDM.jpeg

You'll notice in the topleft, i'm placing a new path. Before i did that, this area was symmetrical, notice on the right, on the path below the academies there is a propellor. Its twin was on the left and has now teleported forward.

But the distance between these two places is huge, thats not an obstruction. Fans could easily function at their previous location without bother, there's no need to move it.

So i would like to ask that this autoteleporting be implemented with a tolerance value, so that if the potential blocker is more than a certain distance forward, say 5-8 tiles, then it is considered to not be an obstruction, and the fan doesnt need moved

I would like to make an elongated city with "wings" sticking out at the side that i put propellors on,

[Sleya]

We should also mention that they burn coal while beeing idle. So... staying in the air without moving also burns coal while they are clearly not rotating.

[Nanako]

Originally posted by Sleya:

We should also mention that they burn coal while beeing idle. So... staying in the air without moving also burns coal while they are clearly not rotating.

this is also a good point, please make them stop consuming coal when the ship is still