Your conclusion is kind of off here. Sure, you can add up the costs, and say it costs plenty to get the 8 shipboard labs. But you completely fail to mention a few things.

1) You also don't need to upgrade logistic slots on any of your planets, which other factions would need to to get so many labs on just a few planets. Small thing, maybe.

2) 9000C for the Capital ships. Yes, true, but each of those capital ships is a big benefit on its own. It gives you increased military strength, which building labs wouldn't. Each capital ship is effectively worth a bit less than wo trade ports as well, which is nice.

So basically, you can try to list numbers all you want, but if you're really trying to say that VL is spending 16200 credits just to get 8 labs, you're way off. As for the open logistic slots, they aren't so much game-breaking as just an extra advantage thrown in there.

Actually they are worth more than 3 tradeports in terms of income. 3,5 to be honest. Two trade ports would generate that income only in a chain of about 4-5 planets. Good luck beating that early on. 

Oh, I was just checking the numbers from a game I had with one trade port in single player, but that was set to "faster income rates". That being said, I find it somewhat interesting that capital ship income is unaffected by game speeds, so is more useful with settings on lower income rates.

How about this?

Research is drastically slowed down if there are no dedicated labs present. Lets say 25 to 50 percent.

 Why because they do not have the space on the capital ship that they would in a dedicated lab since, the ship needs to have the space used for other things like weapons and crew.

While this may make sense, i think the point is to give incentives to go fully mobile for VL players - not to punish them for doing that. And this is exactly that kind of solution.  

You can't have your cake and eat it too, either we try to balance that or we accept that somethings will remain unbalanced.

I just gave IMO a good solution to tech rushing, and one thats actually realistic as well.

As for incentives we already have the titan capital, stripped to the core, and summon ships and ship board research. Thats all pretty boss as it stands, a bigger penalty would be nerfing stripped to the core's resource output.(And thus removing the best incentive to go fully mobile.)

@ OP

Just add the cost of the labs onto the cost of the vasari capital ships.  In this way they will still be balanced.  The research would still be beneficial because the labs would be mobile and therefore have a strong tactical advantage worth researching.

Personally, I think VL labs are fine. Far to difficult to balance without a really big game change.

I'm not tossing out a bunch of numbers because it gives me a hard on, I'm using them because it's the best way to put things into perspective. Look the Loyalist are already paying a premium to have ship board labs. Saying "well it took less then 30 minutes!" isn't really a point either because its not like they hit 8 of 8 labs and now they have all the upgrades researched.

They are the only faction that uses fleet supply to have their research structures. Also if they lose any of their capital ships early game it means they are doubly screwed. So use that time to expand more aggressively. They can't have research and build capital ships and build a fleet and expand consistently.

Ship board labs is a benefit of the faction. Its actually really balanced where its at right now and any heavy handed nerfs this community is so keen to dole out will make it so there is no damn point to research the labs and use them, and make it one less reason to play Vasari Loyalist. You need to understand that you can't as play them or against them like any other faction. 

I dont know if this as been suggested yet but what if you had to upgrade each capital ship with a military or civilian labs?

So you would have to research the ship board lab then buy the the labs on each capital ship. I was thinking you could buy it through the ability management tab I believe there is some room there to add them

I know I'm riding a dead horse here but the strength of the Shipboard Labs is mainly due to the strength of Stripped to the Core. Balance SttC and get rid of the second level of SHipboard Labs (fractions don't seem to work) and you are good to go.

I realy dont know if this feature is powered. As i dont played enought yet. So i dont know if the other faction have overpowered things too. 

I would like to see that every race have some overpowered things and you just need to decide which overpowered feature do you will have. 

for the moment Rebells SB movement is OP and VL Researchlabs are OP. Maybe we just need a OP thing for the other factions too

But. for me: You need to build this labs on ships. you dont get them for nothing. U need to pay for every nextlevel lab.

I think 2 labs per capital ship is pretty crazy. It might be better to either shift it back one tech level (as well as strip to the core), and/or reduce it to 1 lab per capital ship. Or perhaps, a messier option would be to grant each capital ship 1 of each lab, but then each cap would need to individually upgrade 1 additional lab (either military or civilian, but not both). Or perhaps, 1 lab per capital ship, and then the Starbase's colony pods could provide 1 lab at its final upgrade.

Also if 1 lab of each type per ship were deemed too weak, we could always go with a middle ground of 2 labs for the titan and 1 lab for each capitalship.

I like the first tech being only military labs for ships, then the second (and more expensive) tech to be for the civilian labs. 

There, now the Vas can be full mobile, and the high tech advantage with moving SttC to tech level 8 will both be dealt with.

Win Win