okay, so here's my thoughts, in order of importance.
1) reward coupons even when a galaxy claims a pillar. It's very frustrating to spend a lot of ap, time and effort to push your galaxy up a rank or two only to find you're getting 0 coupons because your galaxy claimed that pillar. And no, the fact that your galaxy now has a pillar is not any kind of compensation, especially if it's a pillar like otis or alston. Pillars come and go.
2) eliminate or reduce the 12 hour wait between claiming pillars until there's actually enough active galaxies that this wait time doesn't leave pillars unclaimed so frequently. As I'm writing this, there are currently 2 unclaimed pillars. This means there are two pillars that nobody can attack for an extra few (one has been unclaimed for at least 4 hours) hours. Which means a slower turnover rate. Which means slower accumulation of coupons. This is no bueno.
3) failing #2, at least allow the galaxy with the longest time since it's pillar fell to claim a pillar early if no galaxies qualify to claim that pillar. Or create an auto claim feature so once enough time has elapsed for a galaxy to claim a pillar, if it's done damage to an unclaimed pillar it automatically claims it, and there's not the extra couple hours of wait time to claim a pillar because no galaxy leaders or vices are online.
4) coupon rewards for individual ranking on pillars (ranging from say, 1000 to 1500 for 1st place to 100 for 25th-30th place). For players who aren't in the top 4-5 galaxies, there's little incentive to even hit pillars once a day for galaxy ranking coupons. And even in the top galaxies, there's not much reason to do more than one hit if a player can only do a couple hundred thousand damage or less, since they aren't able to significantly impact their galaxy's ranking.
5) a daily "attack a pillar" quest. And perhaps some achievements for various total pillar damages and single hit pillar damages. Just some things to boost overall participation in pillar wars.
Anyway, just some thoughts. I'll prolly keep playing whatever you do, and I'm a free player, so it prolly doesn't make much difference to you guys either way. And these maybe aren't such major issues to the golders. But still, stuff to think about.