Its good that they have decreased the range that the fleet could hit, but, many pirates still sunk in the first 5 minutes even with a good crew, so it was never made any less challenging.
The bad thing about getting sunk so many times tho, is you lose the cargo and you lose rep when u go to jail. Unlike invasion, there is no total bonus reputation given for defeating the fleet. You can be defeated many times and end up in jail during invasion and still get a pretty 2000 reputation, but not for this fleet invasion