Regular Salamander can also be shot down by PD of the target ship when approaching. What am I supposed to do when someone shoots Salamander MK2 at me? I can't shoot it down, cause PD doesn't work while cloaked. The only option is to accept the EMP damage, or decloak.
On the other hand, that could be a decent way to curb the frustrating "approach cloaked, dump your ship abilities, back out cloaked" thing that phase ships tend to do. Isn't that their thing though? Should there really be a hard counter to that?
You raise a good point, what can you do when it's fired at you? Typically I'd imagine you would have three options:
1. Take the hit and sit under time dilation while your engines or weapons come back online. Not all of your weapons or engines may have been disabled, depending on where you were hit. Insulated Engines can help with this. During this, in real time, the ship that fired the Type 2 still has to reload a missile. If you possess any skills or mods to mitigate your repair time, the impact is further lessened.
2. Grab some distance or cover (another ship, rock, or convenient weapon arc blind) and drop cloak briefly. It sails off at high speed under time dilation, never to be seen again. Granted, this is probably harder to do 1v1, but that's usually academic.
3. Spin. It's trying to hit your engines. Don't let it see your engines. It can be tricky to do and maintain your target, but it's definitely doable in a frigate or a skilled/upgraded destroyer.
If none of these sound appealing to you, then I understand. It's only my intention to demonstrate that this isn't a hard counter, only a soft one.
Omni-shields and beam weapons shut down phase ships pretty hard. Pilum and fighter saturation also works. Even without specialized loadouts, covering ship's backs with escort orders so there isn't anywhere safe to decloak in helps mitigate the jump in, jump out behavior of phase ships.
Player-controlled ships can also bait ships out of phase and blow them up while phase cooldown happens.
I agree with all of this. I can send in one or two medium or large beam-equipped ships after a Phase Ship or use it as an escort as you described. I love fighters for this purpose, too. I dislike the gamey tedium of baiting phase ships to uncloak, however effective it is. Pilum spam is fine in engagements against enemies without point defenses, usually a waste of OP when they do.
I would like the option of sending my fighters elsewhere to escort another ship being attacked by fighters, or to cover bombers, or any other task than slowly chasing down a P-Ship and chipping away at it. I'm more than happy leading fighters into a point defense boat, while cloaked. With a Doom, they may as well not exist at all. I'd also like those beam equipped escort ships to be supporting other ships on the front line, or flanking some frontal shield juggernaut.
Neither of us mentioned this in our posts, but I'd like to add I'd like my low tech ships to have the option of equipping themselves with a Type-2 so they'd at least slow down P-Ships, at the cost of their overall firepower. As much as I love the Enforcer, it's omni shield is rather flimsy, especially in the face of high burst damage.