Manual Vehicle Pathing

Disclaimer:
This is not a I-am-smarter-than-the-devs-and-they-should-implement-this thread. I am a Computer Science student with a concentration in game development. I am interested in game design and mechanics implementation. I'm posting this here to get feedback on an idea I came up with last night.

Overview:
Manual vehicle pathing would involve players defining a path for the vehicle by manually drawing a path on the terrain for the vehicle to follow. Instead of doing any pathfinding, the vehicle AI would only handle steering and arrival. There should be some verification and smoothing/lerping of the path.
This control scheme is more popular in touch-based mobile games but I think it has great potential in RTS games.

Image from "Flight Control" , iOS mobile game.

Story:
I was playing World of Tanks with a friend last night. I was in a KV-1S and a fight happened at a choke point. A friendly scout tank (Luchs) was blocking the choke while I really needed to pass to kill an enemy heavy tank (IS) that the scout tank had no chance of penetrating. So I pushed the scout out of the way and got the job done.
I realized that a similar engagement in CoH2 could have been a dead scout car and a heavy tank with rear pointed at the enemy if not micro'ed carefully.

What problem does manual pathing solve in CoH2?
Tanks "derping out".
"Scheisse, zat mortar squad is in the ze way. Turn around and go in front of ze AT gun!!"

Is it the same as shift queuing move commands?
No. In between each shift queued command, the vehicle AI would still attempt to pathfind and if there happen to be something blocking the way, the AI may "derp out" and go all the way around the map.

Can similar pathing issues be solved by other implementations?
Yes. Sudden Strike series had a priority list of sorts that more mobile vehicles will get out of the way of the less mobile ones. The choke point blocking vehicles will get out of the way if the other way around is far. I don't know how they did it but I think it's something along the lines of this heuristic
Cost = distance to target * my vehicle's fatness + SUM(tell vehicle to move out of the way distance * that vehicle's fatness).

Other (insignificant) advantages of manual pathing:
1. Computationally cheaper than path find every command (think in case of spam clicking or shift queuing).
2. Players shouldn't use "oh the pathing fucked up" as excuse for losing vehicles. The fewer losses players can blame the game instead of themselves, the more competitive the game is.

Final thoughts:
Manual pathing should never take place of automatic pathfinding. It should only be an option to micromanage tactical movements. With manually defined path, the vehicle can either ram/push/plow through obstacles if they are capable of doing so or wait on the path until the path is cleared.

Criticisms are very welcome.

tl;dr : Player drawing a path for vehicles to plow through.

This could easily be done with another two hotkeys.

Straight to waypoint and Reverse straight to waypoint.
They could be auto shift queued. and reset with a regular move command. If the vehicle gets stuck then bad luck.

Problem is, that anyone who microed there tanks with this even moderately competently would win against anyone who didn't.

If the AI pathfinding was improved to balance the 'direct path' approach, then there would be no need for direct path.

also, you would basically end up directly controlling the unit. you might as well just use the arrow keys to control it.

You should already be doing this really to reduce the frequency of pathing issues. Just hold shift and draw out your path with closely spaced right clicks.

You should already be doing this really to reduce the frequency of pathing issues. Just hold shift and draw out your path with closely spaced right clicks.

Yeah, I mean, it would be cool if it was just click and drag, but a bunch of close right clicks works basically just as well and they also let you set your facing whenever you want, which the click and drag method wouldn't allow.

On a related topic:

-Implement "Reverse" command on infantry at 50% reduced speed, where the infantry backpedals while firing with moving accuracy modifier.

Would promote micro as well as bring the concept of "soft retreat" into the game proper.

I think it would improve the "infantry dance" in CoH2 exponentially, and is certainly worth the work.