The decrease in tablet size is in my opinion the wrong way to add risk to fighting a established gang. Newer gangs will struggle significantly with putting up a fight against established gangs and i don't think that's the right way to do things.
The tablet size immediately makes non-whitelisted gangs objectively weaker than whitelisted gangs. Right. And maybe this will drive non-whitelisted gangs away from beefing and getting into fights but we won't know until things have actually been tested for a while. But maybe we should consider the fact that a lot of non-whitelisted gangs already don't want to beef and in a lot of situations are getting beefs and wars forced on them by whitelisted gangs? And when these beefs get forced on you, especially with the tablet size reduction, majority of the time it's a complete steamroll and the non-whitelisted gang is forced to pay up or give some sleezy apology on Tweedle only for other peoples amusement, and just like that the gang has been ridiculed and chances of them actually making the cut as a whitelisted gang is so, so small. At the end of the day this is the kind of stuff non-whitelisted gangs have to put up with. You will rarely find non-whitelisted gangs worrying about their quality of roleplay, it's almost always a different, whitelisted gang, thats forcing them into corners for a quick paycheck or an ego boost.
In my opinion, the solution to adding risk to fighting should be business-related and not tablet-related. This is fairly logical in my opinion but not at all considered in city when gangs get into beef with each other. If a non-whitelisted gang is in close cooperation with a whitelisted gang say for drug supplying (which would be more relevant if drugs were buffed, take the hint devs), they wouldn't want to beef each other as it wouldn't be in the interest of both parties and would by no means benefit each other. That way gangs would actually try to solve the problem instead of meeting it with war cars and guns.