Is there a way to optimize your chances for learning a mod off of the CT lab or is it just close your eys and hope for the best?

Spend lots of research points and close your eyes...

i was kind of afraid of this. we've spent aLOT of RP on it already. and have few to show for it. some of those being the worst things on the CT lab. its really hindering us as a middle legion to be able to grow.

Expect to spend millions upon millions of research points to get them. If not BILLIONS....

Yeah, the Lab is more meant for end-game stuff, if you have other research that you could use then you might be better off doing your own research for now. I'm the only person in my Legion that actually puts a lot of research into our Base, and we're still missing 3 discoveries.

try to recruit a high lvl person that has nothing else to do with his extra RP...

The higher level your base is, the better chance you have of finding things. The more you find, the worse chance you have of finding the next. Leveling your base up one appears to have the same effect as not having your last discovery, chance wise.

wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong

perception of increased chance of success by comparing the streak of failures before and after base upgrade does not mean anything
unless Dan says otherwise, upgrading your base does not change the chance per attempt

I think he is referring to an instance where we upgraded and the difficulty for the next lab discovery went down.

I remember somebody mentioning that, but I watched for it when we hit level 5 and it didn't happen.

might have coincided with the addition of another ctlab arti a while back...

Like Paul said, when we upgraded the base, the difficulty went down. it is the only time it went down. We had all discoveries a few times when more were added and the difficulty stepped up as expected. I don't think the total number of discoveries to be made has anything to do with it. Maybe it is only a fraction of a step and we got there one time, but it did change for us that one time at least.