I do like the idea of ships tasked with goals - A game called STARS! (yes all caps) Had a feature where you could set ships goals like "Attack from Maximum Range", "Attack from optimum range", "Attack for maximum damage", "Do not engage", "Retreat if engaged" etc... This was really nice as you could set multiple priorites (I think it was 2 per ship) which allowed you to setup "Attack for maximum damage" which would target the most damaged ship and destroy it and then setup a "retreat if damaged X%" which made it simple to save the maximum amount of ships - It'd be nice also to have a fleet option that went "Retreat if fleet strength >50%" or a "Retreat if Fleet to Hostile Ratio 1:3" or some such that way fleets would attempt to not fight an obviously lost battle.
I know that fleet captins can be given specific orders however will they be as functional as who/what to target and when/where to retreat? Also could there be an issue to designate a fleet as a reinforcement fleet that would automaticly move to engage a battle that is on equal footing?