I don't see how this rule isn't followed, faction alliances are very clearly defined and there's a maximum 5 factions in each? What proxies exist? If you mean puppet factions those have 'existed' or have been a thing long before conflict rules existed.
Maybe, I plan on making more direct definitions for certain things, like territory, in the future, but some of it is blocked by development timelines.
Unfortunately people need to confirm with us because in the past they just act on their own which generally means Mass RDM or a fail conflict, I also think level 0 is good because all you need to do is inform us of your intentions and we can look into the matter in case there was some sort of rulebreak in the initial scenario. Let's us get ahead of something developing before it's properly approved, I think it's more annoying for your RP to commence then need to be voided later.
This is a good idea. I'll look about defining them.
We don't really mediate unless absolutely necessary, it's listed in the thread but the two sides should agree on a third party mediator, if they fail to agree on one because neither trust the other instead of letting the RP stall or die we offer UA to possibly be an ingame mediator since we're meant to be completely unbiased. They can also opt to not have a mediator if it's necessary.
Technically this is higher than the current requirement of failed sitdowns involving a mediator, is your intention to raise the number of required sitdowns?
In the escalation themselves it says that if it continues it can exceed the max, for instance of a territory dispute hits the maximum escalation and one of the escalation options is to PK an opposing rival then it becomes a new offence (Murder) with a higher max esc cap, they can still begot bad blood, but the point there is if two factions start having issues one minor incident should not lead to war, factions should be rivals for a while before a war, at most here I can see editing around the definitions for max esc or the levels, also a lot of these offences are just examples, there's other reasons that aren't listed that can occur.
Smaller less serious conflicts can maybe take place instead for instances of lower escalation, like instead of a bar fight leading to an all out 5v5 war the two factions can have a 1v1 conflict of firebombing / bar fights for a week.