I HATE this idea. Maybe this means something to a scout but as a heavy, that penalty is worthless. It's not like a blind man standing on another continent can't see us already. But sacrificing some if the little speed we have left. That means something.

Make armor plates stronger. Plain and simple. If they gave us more hp the penalty would be fine.

More like: give Amarr Heavies a bonus to armor plate HP.

If you just buff plates, it benefits shield suits as much as armor suits; so apply the buff indirectly and make bonuses to armor plate HP a staple of Amarr suits in general. Perhaps make Gallente get bonuses to armor plate speed. And so on and so on...

The impression I have is that they want hybrid tanking to be an option. If they don't want it to, all they need to do is make fitting and tanking work a bit more like EVE. Nobody but a complete newb double tanks in EVE because it costs too much powergrid and too many slots.

You dB level is a pointless stat since everyone has a scan radius of 10 meters. Nobody is trying to sneak within 10 meters of someone's back. It needs to be substantially increased, I mean very substantially increased. Take the average distance that scouts tend to hid behind walls when sneaking into a base, and extend it to that. Now people are actually starting to get detected passively, except scouts with lower dB, and having shields increase your dB would actually be a penalty.

lol a penalty for shields?

You're a brave man for suggesting this to CCP.