If I disable a player 40% lower in rank, or 50% higher in rank, I still get the same qty of red badges.. ditto for hacking/raiding.

How about we introduce a variable reward to encourage more risk taking :

1 badge for ranks -40% to -10%
2 badges for -10% to +10%
3 badges for +10% to +50%
4 badges for +50% to +100%

we can adjust percentage to suit, but as a general concept , what do you think ?

Discussed before. Higher rank players already suffer from a lack of content, don't punish them even more.