I may support the idea of overloading only up to 10X, if this comes in the same time as the limiting of research tasks to a maximum of 168 hours / task.
The two ideas seem to complement each other to achieve more balance, since otherwise the protection research would go ahead of the breaker research.
I myself am not too sure about limiting the research, i can't decide whether it would be good/bad. Mainly because some people (myself included) like to 'stack' research, for instance, 20 x 168h research tasks, then 20 x 336h research tasks, and so on. And i figure if it gets limited to 168 hours, the AP costs are going to go through the roof, because we are going to have to resort to things like 1000 x 168h tasks just to get the same effect, lol.
In short, i really have to agree with Gin and gs on this one, research is just right at the moment (albeit a little too diminishing for me lol) and doesn't need limiting anymore, and as for the sense of loss, i know i had a big rant about it earler, but i suppose that's just one of the risks that you take when starting research that long
My suggestion would be to implement the 10x max overload, and see how much it changes things.