Honestly, one thing has been nagging at me and I know many would find controversial.
1) Make gordos only usable on their empire, similar to how a PCC works. It would take away some income streams of players, but this would help avoid as some call pay to play mentality.
2) During Non-UW times, using chain artifacts should get a cooldown before a player can use another artifact. For instance, I use Historia on X, I can`t use another artifact for 1 minute or something. This would prevent artifact chaining and allow the counter player to have a chance to retaliate fairly. (Note 1 minute is used as an example in this case). During UW times, the cooldown is 0.
Again coding could be an issue on either of these, but just rather throw it out here and see what type of flack I get for suggesting a non-galactic dig quest game.