You'd also have to remove the ability to set oranges/reds at corp/alliance levels, as nothing stops "the blob" from oranging their allies and shooting everyone not orange/red. Doing this, you'd outright kill NRDS and severly limit the ability of corps to warn their members of known gankers in their home systems.

In addition, even blue'ing on an individual level would have to be limited; setting tthe 10 - or even 100 - splinter alliances that re-form after the large entities have been disbanded to blue on an individual level seems hardly an excessive effort if it only has to be done once...

In the end you'd have to completely gut the UI to ensure that groups organized outside of the game have no easy way to reckognize each other inside the game. Now, that might just be me, but "let's make our UI obscure and confusing so people have no idea who they're dealing with" does not seem to be a strategy that wins you any game design awards...

We could regulate the blue doughnut via a limited number of treaties and get rid of the blue lists at corp & alliance level. Instead of making someone blue you will have to make a treaty with that entity. Something like this:

- Alliances: limited number of treaties, can only make treaties with other alliances.
- Corps: limited number of treaties, can only make treaties with other corps.
- Players: can make unlimited number of player friends.

CCP then will only have to balance the numbers of treaties that an alliance or corp can make from time to time to ensure that we have conflict and the blue doughnut is gone for good. You could also have some sort of treaty history and see who has honored or broken his treaties.

Where exactly am I "escalating" or "stretching" things?

Talk about "escalating" things quickly. So far your proposed changes negatively impact:
-Members of the blob that are happy being in a large alliance

Anyone using positive standings to keep track of corps that are "generally cool guys".

And everyone not in CVA (from my impression most players in providence) is unable to recognize the threat that known criminals are in the current system?

So you want to remove all the politics and metagaming and replacing it with a neutered, hardcoded version of NRDS?

Oh sorry, I didn't realise this was in addition to your other stupid idea rather than instead of it.

So... if alliances can be as big as they want... how is your suggestion supposed to break up the doughnut? If anything it is likely to cause even larger alliances, as it encourages the fusion of alliances that are currently content to blue each other.

Even with your suggested change I still believe this system is prone to abuse and insufficient to enforce NRDS due to its automated nature, baiting residents into shooting neutral logis (and thus getting their entire alliances set as criminals) comes to mind.

Want to provide industrial goods to an alliance during a war? Sorry can't do that; Linistitul says we're not allowed to set you blue..

Secondly people will stop giving neutrals any leeway at all because they could be harmless or they could be someone Linistitul says we're not allowed to set red.

See that large gang moving through our space trying to find a fight? Sorry we'd love to set them red but Linistitul says we can't until they actually manage to shoot somebody.

Have 5 neutral logis on field, use only 4. Someone screws up, shoots the 5th logi, suddenly 10% of all "good citizens" of the region become flashing red criminals. While the ensuing chaos might be quite hilarious for observers, I believe the people directly concernd might be slightly disgruntled.

Lucky no one seems to be listening to Linistitul then

No its not. Under your proposed system your choices are Not Blue Shoot It or Not Conforming To Some Specific Gameplay Mechanic Don't Shoot. You can't be NRDS because you can't set individuals or corporations red as an alliance.

Standings are a purely social mechinc. Trying to force them to conform to some stupid gameplay rules does nothing but remove depth from the game and is a terrible idea.

The agressor brings 5 logis which are in currently neutral corps (or let's just say X logis, I have no idea how many logis typically are involved in fleet engagements), but utilizes only X-1. Those X-1 logis influence the combat, do not provide criminal sov tags when attacked (as they support criminals) and are too important to be ignored. The Xth logi acts as "innocent bystander"/bait, in order to draw fire from the residents so that their alliance receives a criminal sov tag.