Can’t I just cloak after coming out of a gate and slowly fly away from a gate camp as long as I stay 2,000 meters away from other ships?
Between leaving gate cloak and activating your own cloak, you will be visible for a brief moment. If the gatecamp is well organized, they have some fast ship which burns towards you, trying to decloak your ship. Or they have a lot of drones flying around.
And remember, depending on the type of cloak your speed is reduced up to 90%. It would take a long time to get into a safe distance. In Nullsec however, it might be your only option if you find yourself inside a bubble without an Interdiction Nullifier fitted.
For example the Tech 1 exploration ships cannot fit an Interdiction Nullifier. You can either try to fly out of the bubble or burn back to gate. The one cycle of the MWD while being cloaked can help to gain some initial distance.
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The cloak trick?
I assume you’re talking about the MWD+cloak trick?
Yes, you could only use a cloak to get away, but it has three downsides:
- decloaking a cloaked ship which is moving at 10% or 25% speed isn’t hard to do for a good frigate pilot. They know where you are and your ship is crawling.
- warping after throwing off your cloak means you now need to spend time accellerating from 10% speed to 75% speed, while uncloaked and next to a gatecamp
- travel speed is much slower when you need to spend minutes slowboating hundred km at 10% max speed so that you can safely align and warp before the interceptors catch up
Using the MWD cloak trick with a MWD strong enough means that you can instantly warp after 10 seconds when you drop your cloak, because the speed boost of the MWD puts you above your align speed even while cloaked.
Also, your speed while cloaked is much higher, making it harder to predict where you are to decloak you.
Sure, not every ship fit wants to fit both a T2 cloak and MWD (or can even get their cloaked MWD speed within 10s above 75% of their max speed), but if you can make use of the MWD cloak trick, it’s better than relying on a cloak alone.
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The majority of ships that generally bother with the MWD+cloak insta-warp trick are slow to the point where you will be less than 2km away from your original location by the time that 10 second MWD cycle ends.
However, you did miss the key benefit – you cannot be targeted by hostiles while performing the trick. The cloak prevents you from being targeted while the MWD cycles up, and you enter warp and can no longer be targeted when you decloak, if you time it correctly.
The only counter is to get bumped/decloaked mid-align, which is generally only feasible by a MWD-equipped frigate and requires a bit of skill (manual piloting to your location.
No amount of stationary sensor boosted cruisers in the typical lowsec gate camp will be able to get you.
I think that the benefit of being cloaked while the cloak is active was already implied, but yes. 
perhaps, but when the OP is askying why one would bother with the cloaky trick vice slowboating with the T2 cloak until you are too far away for the gate campers to get you and then uncloak and warp normally, I think it helps to spell things out clearly
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A ship can warp when it reaches 75% of it’s speed…by activating an improved cloak that reduces your speed capability by 90%, one reduces the overall speed needed to be reached to enter warp significantly. Being cloaked while doing this is generally considered a good idea.
There may well be times you have to slowboat out of the bubble and hope you don’t get decloaked, but doing that for every gate regardless is going to make a short trip long (especially if you are doing things as you should already - warping to a celestial first rather than direct gate-to-gate , etc.) Folks find being able to warp off the instant they drop cloak useful in trying not to be turned into red glowing dust.
Put a few billion in a hauler and go for a few trips using the method you talked of in your OP…you will understand.
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