Well, I guess I'm coming at this from more of a dev point of view.
What you are asking for, in terms of greater flexibility with the worldgen parameters...
I strongly suspect implementing what you've asked for would be immensely difficult, given how I suspect the game is actually architected, designed... I think the world gen is a highly complex foundation for everything else, and reworking it to allow for the kinds of flexibility you are asking for... I strongly suspect this would basically amount to redesigning almost all of the game.
Which is why I tries to give sort of workaround type solutions, that would not require said total rework.
But I could be wrong!
And I don't mean to be saying your criticism is not valid, at least in a more broad, what is the actual player experience kind of way.
You bring up a system for faster travel, to reduce the tediousness of gathering spatially distant resources.
Airship? I don't think that would make much sense given the realism focus on technological development. Lighter than air... ships... that can life much more than a pebble or small candle... require hydrogen, or helium... which require ... well, mass production, advanced glass making, and at least the alchemy-transitioning-into-chemistry tech levels of the 1600-1800s.
But... perhaps the lovecraftian horror angle could provide some kind of essentially magical version of this, or an analogue?
Or... mountable animals, like horses, are on the roadmap.
Horses are quite grounded in reality... and also quite helpful at giddyupgofastnow.
Also grounded in reality: Sailing ships, paddled watercraft, or even ships drawn by a beast of burden alongside a riverside.
In much of human history, rivers acted as highways, especially for large amounts of cargo... much faster to go by water than drag the same things the whole way by cart or sled.
Then as we got better at sailing... well dang, now you can zoom around a coast line something like 5 to 10x faster than you can walk or march, even with decent roads.
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