One of the main issues I've always had in pretty much all 4x games is the lack of absolute waypoint movement (or 'optional movement'). 

Absolute Waypoint Movement (AWM) is simply the ability to tell a character (in this case a fleet) to follow an exact path defined by you, rather than leaving it to the computer to generate a path (or to restrict the computer's pathing generation purposefully) providing greater control of the unit - which, because of the lack of AWM, almost always ends up with a death that could have been easily avoided.



As ctrl+right click is already assigned to "move directly to this point, ignoring all lanes", shift will do.

So adding a waypoint would simply be shift+right click, first right clicking on a destination point - using normal pathing to that point - then shift+right clicking on another point adding an exception that the previous waypoint (the first defined waypoint) must be first met before moving onto the next waypoint (the shift clicked one). Each shift+right click afterwards could also add more waypoints.


It should also be possible to add a waypoint while ignoring lanes, which could be shift+ctrl+right click, allowing you to have the fleet move to a point as it currently does (that is, either right click or ctrl+ right click), but having the option to then move to a system without lanes after reaching the previous waypoint by using shift+ctrl+right click - effectively working like shift+right click but with ctrl+right click's properties instead.


Furthermore, a 'ghost path' would be helpful, allowing viewing of how many turns it would take to reach a destination point without actually moving that fleet, allowing for more advanced tactical movement of fleets. This could, perhaps, use alt+(any above combination)+right click, or alternatively you could right click to see the ghost path (then any of the above combination...) then right click a second time (on the end waypoint) to confirm the movement.