1._& 2.
Depends on the situation. It makes sense now to do it if you are not prepared to fight back and rather try to run to avoid the pvp. You could also chose to fight instead of run…
Just because everybody theoretically “has to” spam dscan does not mean everybody actually does. And sometimes you may want to keep your last dscan to copy it into an intel tool that sums up how many of what was there.
3._
Because people have limited time to play the game and most do not like to scan first before they can effectively do anything. And a lot of people like to be part of “something bigger”. The mechanics of wormhole space make larger organisations hardly possible. There are reasons why there are no wormhole-empires of a couple thousand people. Part of them might be that you need static connections and a place on the map where you can gather your members.
4._
The play style of a cloaked hunter surely got more relaxed without local. The prey does not run instantly while the grid and sensor overlay still loads (and still bugs out). It’s surely harder to run from them with the blackout. It’s also harder for bots to be effective.
This one made me smile. A hunter will not take on another ship if he does not think he has a decent chance of killing it. To decide if you want to engage or not is the whole point of flying cloaked. If you don’t use this to your advantage, why fly cloaked in the first place?
In PvP, fitting a cloak takes away one highslot from your ship you could use for a nos or energy neutralizer. This can be the advantage between two ships of the same class that makes the difference. Usually the cloaked one knows this and simply won’t engage.
5._
The answers to this questions probably requires another thread.