Improved space platform pins

[fi5hii]

TL;DR

Improved pins of space platforms to match the "preview" windows.

What?

The pins are one of my favorite ways to take a quick glance at a space platform but in my opinion they lack one very important feature that is already in the game and that is the full ship fitting into the pin. That already exists in the surfaces map, if you hover over a ship it will display the whole ship in frame and for my early game hauler, the whole platform is rendered.

Screenshot 2025-11-11 at 15.18.07.png (1.37 MiB) Viewed 467 times

This looks absolutely amazing! I absolutely love it! I wish I could have a pin like that! I don't know why that isn't possible, but it gets turned into "zoomed out map textures" after passing the preview distance of 28. Here's the max zoom out to get a render of the platform:

Screenshot 2025-11-11 at 15.18.53.png (1.56 MiB) Viewed 467 times

Going even one step up on the slider to 32 doesn't even show the full platform (like the preview on the surfaces does) and it's already "blurred":

Screenshot 2025-11-11 at 15.18.21.png (80.17 KiB) Viewed 467 times

I would personally like a toggle (or increased render or anything similar) in the edit pin menu "show full platform" if you pin the space platform by clicking the pin button in the space platform hub. The rendering like this is already in the game and used for the preview of the platforms so making an option that will basically just copy that behaviour would be amazing, not just for rendering the platform but also centering it so you don't have to manually pin a random building in the middle of your platform if the hub isn't centered (like it is on my platform)

Why?

It would make spaceship pins a lot cooler, more visually appealing and simpler to use (one toggle to center and set zoom).
And as a bonus I don't think it should be too big of a hassle adding this since it already exists in some shape in the game.

[eugenekay]

The "Preview distance" for Pinned location where it switches between Sprite- and Chart-style rendering depends upon the "UI Scale" setting (Automatic / Pixels / Points), and the Resolution of the game window.

Window size 3840 x 2120, Automatic 200% scale: max distance is 36

11-11-2025, 13-08-46.png (2.69 MiB) Viewed 420 times

Window size 3840 x 2120, Manual 100% scale: max distance is 18

11-11-2025, 13-10-49.png (745.85 KiB) Viewed 420 times

Window size 1920x 1060, Manual 150% scale: max distance is 22

11-11-2025, 13-13-05.png (1.37 MiB) Viewed 420 times

Try adjusting these parameters a bit, you may find something that works for you. Good Luck!

[fi5hii]

The "Preview distance" for Pinned location where it switches between Sprite- and Chart-style rendering depends upon the "UI Scale" setting (Automatic / Pixels / Points), and the Resolution of the game window.

Try adjusting these parameters a bit, you may find something that works for you. Good Luck!

Yeah I know about that. What I'm suggesting is giving us the ability of setting the pin to be like the window of the space platform surface preview (when you open the map and hover over a platform); fit to size of the space platform and center it + as a bonus the preview window has a greater render distance.

Thanks for your reply but you missunderstood what I'd like to be added . The feature I want is kind of already in the game, the preview scales and positions automatically and that functionality would be nice for a space platform pin, just click a button and it aligns it for you. The greater distance would also be nice yeah but not at a cost of resizing the UI, which is also already in the game since the platform is more zoomed out but still rendered fully when hovering over the space platform in the map UI as shown on my screenshots above.

[eugenekay]

the preview scales and positions automatically and that functionality would be nice for a space platform pin, just click a button and it aligns it for you.

Pinned Previews are centered upon the Pin location. If this is not the geometric center of your Platform then you can just place the Pin somewhere else. Or rebuild your ship to be “centered” around the Platform Hub entity.

Having the preview auto-align to somewhere other than where the Pin was set would be an instant Bug Report.

There is probably a Performance implication to having the Previews render in “Sprite style” at a larger distance. I personally would welcome an option to increase this cutoff - I use a 28/56/112-tile Grid for my Blueprints, and this is impossible to Preview with the current Pin scheme, unless I spread my window across multiple monitors - eg, 7680 x 4320.

[fi5hii]

Pinned Previews are centered upon the Pin location. If this is not the geometric center of your Platform then you can just place the Pin somewhere else. Or rebuild your ship to be “centered” around the Platform Hub entity.

Having the preview auto-align to somewhere other than where the Pin was set would be an instant Bug Report.

I'm not saying do that by default I said give us a button (e.g. "Show entire platform") that will then center it and align it. I want this to only be an option when you are going into the hub itself and pinning the platform through the hub UI (or maybe when you pin the hub entity the option shows up - like when the space platform info gets added if the hub is pinned) not with alt+rmb for every single pin. The surface preview already has that functionality when you create a new space platform then hover your mouse over the name of that platform in map view. All I want is to have the option of a space platform pin being THAT window (or just that logic). Rebuilding a ship just to fit it into preview is a wild statement the surface preview already fits it and centers it no matter where the hub is.

If this is not the geometric center of your Platform then you can just place the Pin somewhere else.

Yeah, you can do that, but then you lose the information of the spaceship in the name of the pin (the space platform's location) and the extended info when hovering over the pin (current location, speed and weight of the space platform).

Can you center and resize the pins already?

Yes. It has to be done manually by making a pin in the actual center of your space platform, which removes all the space platform information variables from the pin.

What would my proposal improve?

It would add an option to resize and center on the space platform with one click of a button, while keeping all the best that space platform pins offer, the information about the space platform. It would also in some cases (if it's copied from a surface preview and acts the same) increase the render radius of a pin. It would NOT happen by default and you would have to click the button for that functionality, leaving pins the same if this is a feature someone doesn't want.
Talking about this made me also think of maybe a setting somewhere under the interface tab "always show full platform in pins" which would then default to that behaviour.