Exactly, so why is this considered a scout-friendly addition to the game? Anybody with a scout suit will be able to do the same thing now...

CPM i hope you will read this post.
This is from someone that KNOW what is a cloaking in video games.
- Borderlands 2
- Killzone 3
-Fallout 3 and others....

Be able to make ANYTHING that can lead to the ennemy death while cloaked will make it totally OP.

First ! cloak is a scout device.
NOT an assassin device.
Learn the diffrence and try to explain it to CCP please.

Scout is meant to grab information about the ennemy and destroy or trap the ennemy intel.
And get the objectives while Heavier units in combat suit cover them.
So here's :

1 : People must not be able to have their weapon while cloaked they must hold the device in their hand to stay cloaked.
2 : To be able to shoot they must swap weapons (Will make a sound like a flux grenade) OR they can turn it off manually to be quiet.
3 : You can't use any equipements while cloaked and 2sec after the cloak is disabled.
4- After you disabled your cloak (for any reason) everyone can see you on their passive scanners for 1 sec in a radius of 5 meters (avoid shotgun/ Nova knives assassination).
5- Anybody that hurt you disable your cloak (Careful to explosives and lfux)
6- Nobody else than Light Dropsuit (Scouts) must be able to use cloak device. Because it will be a "must have" item and will simply RUIN the game and making it a "crysis" like. And it SUCKS.
No assault / heavy / logi must be able to be cloaked it must be a scout exclusive.

That was for the drawbacks it NEED to be implemented or it will be Cloak514 for everyone.

Now the advantages than nobody talk about and could be implemented to be REALLY useful for the team :

1 : Be cloaked reduce your scanned profile (Db) per 2. You have 36Db ? Now it's 18 while cloaked.
Even a focused scanner will have difficulties to scan a cloaked scout.

2 : Walking on ANY equipements in a radisu of 2 meters (hives/remote/uplinks) will destroy them WITHOUT disabled the cloak or any penality.
Now you can cut all the ennemy intel without being spoted.
And you can defuse all the remote trap on the objectives easily.
You're FREAKING USEFUL.

3 : Being cloaked increase your hack speed about 25%, you can hack without disable the cloak.
Capture objectives and installation are EASIER and you can escape cloaked before the ennemy has comes to you.
Cloak => Run => Hack => Run away : Less than 30sec.

4 : Everybody in the radius of your passive scanner (16m) and which is detected normally now appears in the scanners of ALL YOUR TEAMATES for 5 sec.
Rush into them to spot them all. (but carefully !)

5 : If you crouch even if the ennemy is aiming you while cloaked their aim will not tilt "red".

All I have to say the delay between decloak and shooting for scouts better be short as hell. Like, insanely short. I can get within 3m of an enemy without a cloak, fire, and have him turn around and kill me. If I have to decloak with a loud ass noise, wait a second, then fire you will have more scout deaths than before because it will hinder more than it will help.

This will be even more worthless since Minjas will be the least stealthy and shittiest with cloaks.

I'm okay with having to decloak to fire but it needs to be able to happen fluidly, fast, and natural. The more cumbersome this mechanic is for scouts the more you will be hurting the class.

Except then you have first shots from cloaked Thales and invisible shotguns in the corners.

In regards to switching off the cloak to kill, my only line in the sand regarding that is that the killing part doesn't occur at the same time as being cloaked.

I really seriously recommend going and playing an Infiltrator in Planetside 2 where you need to manually disable cloaks before firing. The shenanigans you can accomplish are amazing, you don't need to fire while cloaked. The VAST majority of PVP games that allow cloaked alpha strikes, suck balls. If you don't know this you haven't played enough other games.

Ask any MMO player what they think about cloaked damage.

Having played Halo, I can tell you that this is by far and a way the best option suggested.

If something causes horrible imbalances by its introduction, the easiest way to combat it is to balance it on the contrary, and thats exactly what Halo did with this. CCP shouldn't be afraid to copy the idea, this is true.

And at the end of the day, people complaining about high-alpha damage weapons like all the top tier Snipers and the Shotgun... generally speaking your dead before you know whats happened currently, so whats the big deal? Besides, if you get hit by a Thale's, the likelihood is, is that if you want to combat it you'll probably spend the rest of the match looking for it. And for as a Shotty myself, it still takes about 2 shots to inflict any major damage, and any time I've ever been killed by a Shotgunner I've turned, noticed him, by the time I'm retaliating I'm already dead. So the invisibility effect doesn't matter as much as people are making it out to be.