Thanks for the new options for fermatas and breath-marks!
But, I still have problems controlling playback as I want it.
Could we please have slope-options for rit/accel? Like early or late? And amount?
And the option to hide a fermata?
I must confess, as a human player I would also have troubles playing this back correctly 
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Yes, this is a mess.
The molto rit comes right after a tempo,
and the fermata should be hidden.
So, your answer supports my FR.
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If you plan to hide the fermata, why is it there? Wouldn’t controlling the ritard do what you want on its own?
If a pause in the playback is what you are after, you don’t need a fermata for that. Just adjust the tempo map.
I need better control of the playback than a plain rit.
But apparently the fermata does not provide it. As Nickie says, adjust the tempo map in the key editor.
I admit I would also like some bezier curves in the tempo lane, to make rubatos and organic tempo changes. I also admit I don’t know the shapes that would feel organic and would love to read a scientific paper on this… Does anyone here know whether there’s been some serious research on this field?
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I have done some research on this, but not very scientific.
Short story: Real musical tempo are always curves, and the standard stuff like rit/aTempo is just scratching the surface of what’s going on.
To get really good tempo-maps one has to use bezier-curves, but it might not translate directly to common written text.
Linear tempo-maps, or even squire ones can be usable enough.
On the Dorico-side: It’s much about practical usage in conjunction with visual output. So, detailed pen-writing for tempo seems tedious and less good. Just an option for late/early amount would usally be good enough.
I find myself adjusting visual output to getting Dorico playback ok, and that should ideally not be so.
I’ve never liked default rit playback for that reason - it always felt wrong because it was played as a straight line. As @GeirSol says, rit is organic. It’s more of an inverse exponential function.
I think it would be great to have perhaps three defaults for ritardano slopes: linear, exponential, and logarhythmic (or something like that, I don’t know if log would ever be a realistic use case). It could be both a global engraving option and a local option in the properties panel.
I agree too that manipulating visual output is very difficult to translate to realistic playback!
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FWIW, I seem to remember that Finale allowed assigning a bezier curve to playback tempo, thereby creating a more realistic ritardando. Or am I mistaken?
Sibelius also offers Early (like riten.), Late, or Linear options for a rit. line. In my experience that’s enough detail when working with notation. To get subtler than that you’ll want to edit the tempo track manually.
Makes sense. Early would be logarithmic, late would be exponential.