Profile of Tric

Usually the retreat path is obvious, but there are times when you are left scratching your head. Units take the shortest way back to base, it is simple enough, just tweak the pathing overall to be more consistent.

This, but felt I had to offer something in my post originally instead of just shooting down the suggestions.

The problem isn't "pathing", in the way most people understand it. Its the precision map and proximity to objects that causes all the issues. This is why vehicles spin, and take odd routes. That and the way they navigate pathing with shift queuing as I've explained and show previously.

As Sib said, pathing in general is a problem, not retreat paths, and it is because of the way the engine handles collision and objects near one another, again as I demonstrated and showed literally years ago.

The above suggestion, especially number two, would impede the game and player choice more than solve anything. Especially since people would just sit on way points for retreats. The variety, though sometimes aggravating and annoying in retreats also causes a bit of unpredictability, rewarding players that react to that with kills or wipes.

And number one is already in the game if you pay attention to the minimap / enable the option. Since you are moving from the base sector it literally draws where your unit will move and the path they will take, this is also true for the retreat path. The only change to this pathing is areas opening up via crush or player built objects, such as barbed wire or sandbags.

So not really sure how either of this solutions solve the actual problem, and that is the precision map, pathing in general, and how units navigate within it.

EDIT: Since I didn't offer a solution.

You could have a player be able to set their own retreat way points that the unit would follow, much like shift clicking and the queuing of orders. Limit it to 1-3 markets that they would navigate to on retreat. Gives the player a bit more micro intensive freedom to make decisions and now you can retreat around things instead of through. Rewarding for the person retreating when it works, and rewarding for the opponent when they predict it and get a wipe on retreat.

This would be the simplest thing to implement, though doing it for large numbers of squads could be tedious and intrusive overall to the player experience. Though that is not for me how to decide how it should be implemented or what limitations should or should not be enforced, that is up to Relic. This would allow you to see the same pathing draw on the minimap as you see points, knowing where your unit is going to retreat and what path they will take, short of another player blocking you with sandbags/wire.

Edit 2:

Another way is from the main HQ you can set 3 retreat paths, like rally points. Then you can have a hotkey for each.

R+1 = 1 -> Base
R+2 = 2 -> Base
R+3 = 3 -> Base
R+4 = 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> Base

Or something similar. Then you can have quick retreats to sides, to base, or to the middle down then down a side to base, ect;.

Which would give more flexibility, couple that with the soft retreat that was suggested below, where you can soft retreat to friendly territory. There are a multitude of ways that would be interesting and offer a better dynamic than what is currently implemented.

You can do it via transitions, and they have a timer for transitions entirely. This used to be the work around to have a 1 second transition at the start of a match to turn on lights.

So you can do it this way and set a timer.

However I remember this being an extremely buggy and water-downed version of what was available in vcoh.

Take a tree or anything similar to that, that has fx files tied to it properly, that you like. And assign that object the one you want to be on fire.

This used to be the workaround when they broke doing it properly and I'd have to assume it is still broken.

There is something wrong for sure, the windmill should not be occupiable after destruction, anyway.

As for the destruction animation, I've made a comparison video about it here:
Windmill destruction animation comparison - COH1 vs. COH2

Ha. So I was right, it was nostalgia. And this makes it even worse, its just a failed copy paste and not even updated. There are a lot of these buildings in the builder that are entirely bugged, there's a few that even have campaign hardcoded units tied to them.

But again, this isn't related to the 64 bit patch. This has been broken/bugged since CoH 2 launched.