I think the ultimate signal loss mode for proximity forest, etc would be hover and then land on low battery. Is that what happens when you set it to hover and then the battery runs out?

I think so, yeah that is what happens.  As explained on page 44 of the user manual:  https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/ ... _Manual_v1.0_en.pdf

I can't seem to find it in the instruction manual, but I'm pretty sure - at least for the first Avata, that if you set it to hover on loss of signal, it will initiate a standard RTH once the battery runs down.  If the drone is hovering under foliage you'll need to try and and re-establish a connection before RTH initiates.
I not infrequently find myself flying both under foliage AND over water, so I'd be in trouble whatever the drone decided to do! :-)  That said, it would be nice to have the option to determine which action takes place.

Hi, Mauronic. Thank you for reaching out and for asking this question. Let me confirm this with our relevant team. I'll keep you posted.

For low battery RTH the drone will do just that - return to home. If more than 20m away it will fly up to the preset RTH altitude you made in the app before take off, turn the nose of the drone to the HP and fly back before landing. However, there will be a 10 second countdown warning that low battery RTH will initiate. You can cancel the countdown by pressing the start/stop button once when flying in N/S mode on the FPVRC3 or by pressing the black flight mode button on the motion controller 3. If you ignored that and RTH has started you press the orange lock button on the motion 3 or pause button on the RC3 to cancel RTH. There is no low battery RTH in manual mode. If you don't press those buttons in time and RTH starts in a woodland you are going to fly up into the tree and crash. Once cancelled you will need to promptly fly the drone back yourself before critical battery initiates and the drone lands itself where it is and beyond your control (fingers crossed the drone isn't over water)!

The RTH/Hover/land is only for signal loss (and always check that before take off as part of a preflight check) - you don't want to land if flying over water or RTH if flying through a forest or indoors or hover if flying long distance should you lose signal.

Thank you for patiently waiting, Mauronic. We have confirmed that the aircraft will hover until reaching the low battery level, and then the aircraft will trigger low battery RTH automatically, and if reaching a critical low battery level, the aircraft will land directly. Hope this helps.