Does anyone know if there is a way to get a soldier to a specific point using a defined route? I've had a couple of situations where I want to move a solider into cover that is on the other side of some environmental hazard (usually a Thin Man poison cloud), but my solider insists on moving directly through it, even though they have enough movement to get there by going around.

If your dashing you can move 2 times, other then that, I dont know.

I also find some of the pathing weird. Sometimes they will jump down levels only to climb up, I know it takes less tiles, but strategically, it makes less sense.

Yeah there's no way to fix that. It can suck. There's also situations where say you would be sending them through an overwatch, in particular a sectopod one, but there's no way around it. Line of Sight also being fucked up in this game doesn't help the situation.

I don't know what version you are playing but in consoles (PS3 on my behalf) there is always a line in the pointer that shows the path your soldier will take. I don't know if that helps or not but it is useful at some situations.

Nope, not unless you can maneuver around it in two turns paths they take tend to be strange. In fact I just had a bug where I was trying to enter a downed UFO. The problem was when I moved the cursor it only showed me the top of the ship and even worse is when I moved into the ship it counted as two turns for no reason leading to a critically wounded solider ( I had the alien surrounded by 3 people and realized noisy could take a damn shot). Thankfully it was only critical wounded or the tv would have shattered

Yeah you can't control that at all.

It happens often with poison patch but also I found, the soldier like to get on top of a bus to then drop back down on the other side instead of just turning the corner on the ground and staying under cover ...