Just a couple of ideas on research. They've probably been mentioned before, but I think they are good ones. I think  

- Instead of researching one particular ‘technology’ with all of your universal research points, have a system for allocating a certain number of labs to each individual scientific field
- Have breakthroughs in each field occur randomly, but generally faster with more labs assigned to research in that field
- Split technology into field breakthroughs and specific beneficial technologies for particular weapons, ship systems or social projects, so that whenever a breakthrough is made in a theoretical field, it opens up specific potential projects which can then be assigned labs to provide access to new useable modules, buildings or abstract benefits
- Technologies for upgrading current modules wouldn’t require a theoretical breakthrough, and would therefore be available once the ‘level’ before had been perfected. This would give the player a choice of focusing efforts on far-out theories, improving on current methods or a mix of the two, adding replayability
- Visually representing this new system in the game would just be a matter of having 2 tabs in the research screen, one for theoretical fields and another for researched and available to be researched practical applications