Hello!
An idea for a mod.
We've hit a fundamental limitation of the game's current system. The base designation grid is hard-coded to 4x4 tiles, as confirmed by the official game wiki: "One designation block (16 building grid squares)". This is exactly why you can't place a 1x1 designation or align it to a finer grid.
This limitation affects many players and has been a topic of discussion in the community. The main challenge, as the developers have noted, is that allowing smaller designations would make it very difficult to prevent excavators from unintentionally digging away material from behind structures like retaining walls. The developers have provided a console command toggle_terrain_designations_over_entities as a workaround to allow designations over retaining walls, but it is not a perfect solution.
Is it possible to make it so that designations can be placed on a finer grid — meaning the designation snap would align to a finer grid (on every tile) rather than only 4x4? Or alternatively, allow designations to be placed as single 1x1 tiles?