Is there some placement of an Aqueous Accumulator that makes it possible for its face to be "flush" with a wall, and for it to still generate its full output?
Place it behind glass? It's not exactly flush, but gives a similar visual effect, if I'm understanding the sort of setup you're trying to make. It requires you to leave a side open somewhere if you want to fiddle with the configuration, but there's not too much reason to do so frequently with the AA.
Could it not be acceptable to give it an "input" face that could "suck in" an adjacent source block? Then a row of three water, with an AA in front of the middle water block, could 'generate' water by grabbing the middle block as it appeared?
Nope, that's completely unacceptable I'm afraid. The point of the AA is to avoid the issues and lag that come with regenerating source blocks.
What if it merely pretended to grab the source block (generate water at the higher rate, without actually going through the block removal/regeneration), much like it does now when directly adjacent to two source blocks? I suppose this means a few additional block checks (checking the blocks next to adjacent water source blocks), but would accomplish the desired functionality, and increase placement flexibility, without the performance penalty of regenerating source blocks. I would imagine you only check the adjacent blocks when there's a block update, right? So checking the additional blocks should be a one-time cost, rather than an ongoing performance hit.
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Place it behind glass? It's not exactly flush, but gives a similar visual effect, if I'm understanding the sort of setup you're trying to make. It requires you to leave a side open somewhere if you want to fiddle with the configuration, but there's not too much reason to do so frequently with the AA.
What if it merely pretended to grab the source block (generate water at the higher rate, without actually going through the block removal/regeneration), much like it does now when directly adjacent to two source blocks? I suppose this means a few additional block checks (checking the blocks next to adjacent water source blocks), but would accomplish the desired functionality, and increase placement flexibility, without the performance penalty of regenerating source blocks. I would imagine you only check the adjacent blocks when there's a block update, right? So checking the additional blocks should be a one-time cost, rather than an ongoing performance hit.