replay repeats not honored

In Playback Options > Repeats there’s an option called “Play repeats after D.S./D.C. jump” - by default it’s turned off.
Fermati go exactly where you put them - I’m guessing it makes more sense on the second chord in Guitar 2 than on the first chord, so move it there. If you really don’t want it to show on the second player at all, your options are to either define a custom Playing Technique that looks like a fermata, and only apply that to Guitar 1, or to drag Guitar 2’s fermata off the edge of the page in Engrave mode. Neither of these options is available in Dorico SE, unfortunately.

Dorico very intentionally positions fermati to all staves at once. It’s not a bug; it’s exactly as designed.

The justification is that in most cases, all players hold a pause at the same time. If, as in your case, one player is holding a long note, then the pause will be correctly placed over the long note, rather than midway through that long note. If you place the pause at the correct rhythmic location - the exact location for the player who needs to pause on a specific note - Dorico fixes the pauses for other players.

What would you expect one player to do while another player pauses? The main exception to this rule is where a group pauses while one person plays a cadenza. Aside from that exception (and I guess aleatoric/asynchronised music) Dorico is just following a basic musical rule.

The thing is that most of the time it’s a big time-saver. I’ve played new music in many groups where composers - caveman-like or not - have assumed that if they put a pause on one stave, every other player in the group will magically know about it. You would not believe the number of wasted rehearsal hours in my short life, let alone anyone else’s.

As to your coda repeat issue, if I select your “D.S. al Code (take repeats)” text, I can see in the properties panel that the “Replay Repeats” switch is flicked but unticked. The flick of the switch means that you’ve told the property to ignore the global setting. You then need to actually tick the tickbox to tell Dorico to play the repeats.

A simple workaround to retain all powers on your fermata is to create a playing technique that has a corona glyph (I actually created a fermata up and a fermata down). I seldom use those, they’re mainly used in a cadenza with more than one fermata. This way I can have the instrument playing the cadenza display as many fermatas I need while the other instruments only have one. Of course, I won’t expect my own playing technique fermatas to have any influence on the playback, even when the team implements something for the “real” ones.

There’s a sensible workaround for it in Dorico Pro (which involves using the laissez vibrer tie property and then doing some manual dragging), but this functionality doesn’t exist in SE or Elements.

Dorico does not yet play/honor ties into a repeat or ties over a first ending into other repeat endings.