Have you considered a mod option to apply a UPS friendly animation for very late game?

So say just the various colours on the default lab animation. I ask we as like the mod for early and mid game, but late game using 0.8 update time on just flashing lights is very high. So a simpler mode of all colours lights in a random pattern would seem to be an acceptable compromise,

Unfortunately the vast majority of update time is spent just iterating through each lab. You can change the math being done per-lab if you like though and try it out: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DiscoScience/discussion/5e1900af17cd12000d70692b

So in this suggestion there would be no lab iteration. It would fall back to a statically defined light animation sequence. It would be a startup setting just for megabase usage. I could make it as a new mod, but having it as an option in this mod feels so much more natural.

This is the thing, though: Factorio doesn’t support more than one animation for a given kind of lab. Disco Science effectively runs its own animation system, updating the graphics of each lab every (sixth) frame. This would be required even if the animation was dead simple, and synchronized across all labs.

Ah I skimmed your code and saw you running your own animation over the lab entities. Although I hadn't considered the lights I must admit.