People who dislike the old system for Fleet battles will, in all likelihood, dislike the new system, as well. I agree with Syrup_Chugger3's assessment that people will figure out very quickly which 3 ships will make up the ultimate starting lineup and which reinforcements will make up the reinforcements, rendering the rest of the ships obsolete yet again.
Instead of introducing such a drastic overhaul to an existing system that some people actually like, they should test this out with a new setting all-together ... such as Land Craft Battles. Introduce something like that, implement the new system there and, if it is liked by the population, transfer the model over to the Fleet battles. When they implement this new system and it is universally disliked by the users, will they back out and revert back to the original model? Highly unlikely.
I'm all for testing out a new system, but overhauling a system that people spent time on (and perhaps money) to master might alienate an entire group of people. Tweaks here and there is one thing, but this may be too much. We will have no choice but to go along with this vision of theirs, but I hope they have a plan to back out of it quickly if it fails horribly.
