Another house was crippled early on by having only a single scientist who could manage 5 research labs, while everyone else was using 16. Took a long time to get a second scientist and that one could also only manage 5 labs too
Any chance of "fixing" that issue in some way? I abandoned my most recent Conventional Start game when my only scientist died about 8 years into the game (I had 6 Military Academies at that point, but they only produced useless officers).
The obvious fix would be to allow labs to run research with no scientist leading the project. If even a 0% bonus (or wrong disciplined) scientist should be considered a big benefit, maybe working with no high level supervision should give the labs a -25% or -50% penalty or something?