Number of labs has no affect on speed, just tier (level) of research available to be performed and available to be used. In some cases, if you have a tier 6 research item completed and lose a station or two, you won't be able to build that item anymore until you replace the lost stations.
Research speed can be increased as one of the pre-game options. If the fastest setting still doesn't do it for you, then keep reading.
This mod has so many things to research and so many levels to research to force players to pick. You can be a generalist and have very low levels of a lot of things, or very high levels of a couple of things, not high levels of everything. Playing to get high levels of everything is certainly possible, but don't feel bad about being unable to do so in a game as that was not the intent.
There are two ways to go about making research go even faster then the default values in a single player game, edit the mod to make it go faster, or play using the dev exe and basically, use the options in there to give instant research times or just give everyone all research with a single button press. For multiplayer, you cannot use the dev exe, and modding the mod would force everyone else to have to have the same vales so it's highly recommended that if you play multiplayer, that you save a copy of the files you change before you do so, so that you can revert back quickly before you load the game up.
For modding tips, info, and as close to live support you'll ever get here, please see this thread: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/407617/page/1/#replies
For help with the dev exe commands, I think it's ctrl + shift + . (basically just control + >) to open up the options and , (comma) to back up one level in the menu and just play around in it until you figure out what you wanna do. Don't quote me on that though as it's been a couple of years since I last played/modded sins.
