Jabble

I'll throw in one from the late, great Mark Hollis, 1984.
 

Don't worry, we'll all get horribly confused when Engine 5 comes out!

Here ya go:
OK, pause and edit might be made to be quite easy, but it would break up the whole idea of a commander biting his nails during that WEGO minute where he's just an observer.  Plus, the devs would have to develop such an edit method, which I'd guess isn't trivial.
The idea of WEGO is to break up the battle into useful chunks to balance commanding and action playing out, to best simulate real life combat; mostly that works well. This is just one of those situations where it results in unrealistic behaviour - temporary paralysis when a reaction would happen IRL - so it would be good to come up with solutions that still fit within that WEGO time chunk approach.

I've just tested this in CMBS on Elite, using the Training Campaign.  Sent two units down to meet the Bradleys, mounted up, and sent the wagons hunting to a point near the red team.  I ordered the troops to dismount to a point near the end of that path.
However the Bradleys stopped as soon as they saw some reds, far short of their destination, and the troops dismounted and walked the rest of the way.

At the very least there could be a 'verify' utility after a path has been plotted, alerting the player to anything that ends up different from intended.  If this is a specific command then it won't affect the performance at path issuing time.

Yep we'd definitely want that result facilitated, it's just establishing the best way to do it.  What would happen IRL if a unit encountered an enemy?  Why would they continue to the intended destination?  I reckon that would only happen if the encounter was worth ignoring, i.e. it's not a high threat.  In the game that reaction could potentially be configured, so it would just continue as intended with a new red icon now visible.  But a configurable reaction could also take into account a non-ignorable contact, similarly reflecting a real-life response of fight or flight.

Indeed so, but usually you plan your dismounts to leap off at the end of the journey and go to a nearby advantageous position.  If the vehicle is halted some way before that then the dismounts have a long walk, quite likely over dangerous ground.
Whereas if you prepared them to react to an early halt, they could move to some contingency cover position or maybe just hit the dirt and fight back, rather than wander nicely in front of the enemies' gunsights to their original destination.

Here ya go:
OK, pause and edit might be made to be quite easy, but it would break up the whole idea of a commander biting his nails during that WEGO minute where he's just an observer.  Plus, the devs would have to develop such an edit method, which I'd guess isn't trivial.
The idea of WEGO is to break up the battle into useful chunks to balance commanding and action playing out, to best simulate real life combat; mostly that works well. This is just one of those situations where it results in unrealistic behaviour - temporary paralysis when a reaction would happen IRL - so it would be good to come up with solutions that still fit within that WEGO time chunk approach.

Agreed.  I suppose I think of hunt as 'move but keep your eyes peeled and be careful'.  Adding sensible reactions would surely improve the behaviour of encounters during any type of move, but if it's during a hunt the unit should be in a better position to carry out its consequent actions as it's not being caught by surprise.  All sorts of modifiers could apply.

The more I think about it, I reckon it should be a new posture rather than a command, though it would have response-based commands/instructions associated with it.
An example: say we decide on 3 threat levels for any one unit - low, med & high.  A scout unit is hunting along a track, the last waypoint (and hence current leg) has posture defined as "Ignore low threat", "Stop and fight med threat", "Relocate from high threat".  A relocate path/destination has been set, associated with that waypoint.
So, it first spots an enemy scout unit some way off-  low threat, so carries on.  Next it spots an infantry unit a bit closer - that's a medium threat so he stops moving and starts shooting.  Then a tank appears, triggering the scout to relocate along that predefined path.
Another example: an ATGM team is stationary at a location.  It has posture "Ignore low threat", "Relocate on med threat", "Fire and relocate on high threat".  It sees enemy scouts, so ignores.  It then sees an enemy tank appear within range, so it fires an ATGM and immediately relocates along its predefined path.
If such threat levels can be established then one of several responses could be pre-assigned to each of them, associated with a waypoint or current location.  Hence it wouldn't be limited to any one type of movement, rather like how arcs are used at the moment.  Hunting would just become a 'careful' movement with quicker awareness/response to threats than other types.
 
It'll be a little more complex with respect to primary weapon & target types, in that an ATGM team would only shoot-n-scoot on armour, whereas it may run away from approaching infantry without firing.
 

A 'react' command should be configurable, so if a Hunting team spot something that's not an immediate threat they could just continue.  It's only if a 'withdraw' reaction is triggered that they'd relocate, presumably because they encountered a significant threat.  The trick will be how to add such configurability to decide that reaction.
I suspect that once a withdrawal has occurred, it's less likely that the player would want to continue the original route & postures.  In which case it wouldn't be worth the devs' efforts to implement preserving that, especially if they could be working on something else we value more.
 

The simplest solution would be a binary option based on some sort of qualifier: either stand and fight (like at present) or retreat to a predefined place, executing a move command.  Such a reaction shouldn't necessarily be limited to scouts though, as equally any other unit without AT weapons may wish to retreat, so we're really just looking at a more developed reaction to a Hunt encounter.
What could complicate that is a 'glass cannon' nature where a unit may indeed be able to combat a tank - if it gets in the first shot - but lacks defence so thereafter would withdraw quickly.  Such a situation would be similar to the 'shoot-and-scoot' idea of taking a shot and then relocating, the only difference being that isn't the result of a Hunt command.
Also, this reaction shouldn't necessarily be limited to tanks, e.g. a walking scout team encounters a larger infantry force so withdrawal is the best response.  It sounds like we need a configurable threat response based on several factors, activated during a Hunt or simply being stationary.
Which then implies that a 'React' instruction may be the solution, requiring choice of a few parameters, which may be triggered whatever the unit is doing.  If the instruction conditions are set up then a Hunting unit could, say, stand and fight, take a single shot then relocate, or relocate (flee) immediately.  A stationary unit could do similar, e.g. an ATGM team would take the shot and then relocate.
As Hunt reaction and Shoot-and-Scoot both seem to be sought after, this would kill two birds with one stone.

Who loves ya, Dimitri!