cloned my existing save off for an investigation of space exploration in 0.17, and I ran into two problems:

adjacent_tile_collision_test seemed to interfere with being able to place the pumps, setting it to nil dealt with that locally.

inland pumps don't connect to adjacent things automatically when placed. Save/load will connect them, as will placing the pump and then placing the pipe or other entity it should feed. Offshore pumps don't do this. The arrow for the fluid box appears to be a bit too far inside the pump to connect. When offshore pumps are connected, there are two visible arrows for the fluid box connection, may be related.

relevant mods in this save are aai-industry_0.3.8, and space_exploration_0.1.12

Can you describe the situations in more detail? My tests right now aren't showing a problem. I can place the pump in anywhere with a 2x3 area free or on a coastline, and when I place a pump facing a pipe or an assembler's fluid input it connects.

adjacent test was a red herring it seems.

just tried all 4 directions on land, and two on a shoreline, for pump -> pipe. both behave the same here -- pumps don't autoconnect when placed first, but a pipe placed down next to a pump will connect.

ah, after playing around with turning mods on and off, it's aai-industries.

vanilla pump has
collision_box = { { -0.6, -1.05 }, { 0.6, 0.3 } }, fluid box pipe connection @ { 0, 1 }
aai has { { -0.6, -1.45 }, { 0.6, 0.45 } }, pipe connection @ { 0, 0.6 }

I'm not sure why it would work for offshores, but not inland, or what exactly the right value there should be

additional datapoint, possibly meaningless:

undergrounds will autoconnect to the pump when rotated. rotating the pump does not however.