Quick sum up of a two hours of playing vanilla, from scratch (new game):
- Phase skimmer is a pure win, it's useful in almost ANY SITUATION. Combine that with Heavy Blasters on Medusa, or full-pulse-laser-Wolf, and... Goodbye Hounds, goodbye.
- Phase cloak overall is pretty nice, but actually, not so much fun to play.
Few issues with it though - right now, I'm never going to give a phase ship to AI, it's just so risky.
Another one, I find Doom to be completely... well, not underpowered, but very, very limited in it's usefulness. While phase frigates are fast, and can use hit'n'run tactics, in Doom I find myself phasing, moving close to enemy, unphasing and firing all I got (sabots and torpedoes), praying that he dies quickly because I don't have enough flux to phase again and run. It worked on Onslaught pretty well, but of course you spend all your missiles. And I was lucky. But then another time, I tried using this thing against a Venture! Sabots might reach it, but torpedoes will be ripped apart by PD. And that leaves you with pretty much nothing, because you cannot have sustainable Pulse Laser fire (because you will just die), and Heavy Blasters will kill your flux anyway, just faster.
On the other hand, phase frigate handles Venture no problem. Really, no problem at all. Close in, unphase, shoot AM/sabot, phase, fly away. Rinse'n'repeat. Frigates can also pretty much phase/unphase all the time, because of low flux costs. Doom however, not so much, unless you go full vented, and have no flux buffer that way. And don't shoot of course.
My post was written too quickly, and too late at night, so this part is ***.
BTW, I got so good at phase/unphase that enemy ships can't even hit me :>
Comments about Doom, and it's current state, solutions, etc. much appreciated!