The simple solution is to send in only one or two ships first of all to start the link. That way you’re only getting surprised with a small proportion of your fleet - whether it’s cloaked sniping BS or recons or whatever - and can decide to re-ship or withdraw with the main force before you whelp the whole lot in one.
These tactics were pretty well worked out and talked about within a couple of weeks of the first introduction of this ESS system. We had a lot of fun taking out over-confident Nightmares and such as people thought they’d come scoop some goodies.