I wish to propose that there be an increasing bonus to research speed to techs within a slot as techs within that slot are completed.
As it is now, a tech at 19/20 would provide more progress to the completion of the node than a tech at 20/20 due to overflow rules, which makes no intuitive sense. It's particularly painful if you look at a research node like so:
A (5/5)
B (20/20)
C (10/10)
D (25/30)
A solution I wish to propose is that for each completed tech within a node, the random bonus for that node is increased by the skill of researchers. Or there is an increase to the overflow, like +1 or +2 to overflow for each completed tech. Or anything, really - When a tech in a research group is completed, you realize that there are less topics for researchers to look at, which means that intuitively speaking, more progress should be made on the uncompleted topics.
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...Actually, we could have a different research system altogether - Research is largely about breakthroughs and at the same time incremental progress, so perhaps we could roll the skill of researchers to assign where their points go? Or something. Perhaps generic researchers will do the bulk of the work?..
Maybe everything will automatically progress, but slowly (and maybe keyed off research points), but we can assign a small number of research teams to accelerate a few techs that we really want.