Thinking of quirky counters, anything that stresses at the start of engagement or after attacking the gunboats would prevent the lock/calc action. Jam also works. Kylo Crew + crit source could stress the target with Panicked Pilot. That's awfully specific though, and counters need to be more generic. Jam stuff like Scimitar and Captain Seevor is still pretty limited/specific too, and the jam action is range 1. Freelance Slicer is hard to use too.
Looks like the standard anti-torp strategy will apply as always: manage range carefully on approach to avoid range 3, then next round boost forward to range 1. Ideally make them chase you through asteroids, try to flank them, etc. If you're not able to do that, or you screw it up, you're eating heavy losses.
A jankier gunboat list would be 3x gunboats with os-1, passive sensors, proton torps, advanced proton tops, and either shield upgrade or perhaps afterburners for a fast close. With range 1 covered the opponent has no range control, so the effort goes entirely to either flanking, or init-killing one of the gunboats asap. Nowhere near as good as a 4th gunboat or a support reaper, but it'd be a fun/casual mixup against some approaches people might take to the regular fleet.