... As far as this project, the last few years have been rough

What else can you say?

Unfortunately, you are so right :-(

When I started here 7 years ago, things were running rather smoothly.
However, it's become quite bad within the last few years :-(

So, I am afraid that the title of this thread "Is GPUGRID done?" is justified.

Anyone willing and able to pick up the challenge of developing a 'work request' script which suspends the flow of update requests when the host has active tasks for the project?

I wrote a batch script for Windows XP / Windows 7 back in 2013. The main purpose was to check the progress of the tasks, and restart the host if there's a stucked task. It's here if you are interested, though some parts of it won't work on Windows 10, also I have a more sophisticated one now (which actually does check the number of GPUGrid workunits in the queue, and issues requests when there's less than 2 per GPU), but it needs to be updated for Windows 10 (no WMIC in Windows 10, it should be rewritten in powershell). It does much more than requesting work if needed. I haven't published it, because I find the mass use of such methods counterproductive for the community. It can't cure the work shortage anyway, the continous supply of workuntis would be the real solution. The primitive method is already out there, the mass use of that (or a more sophisticated one) could bring down the GPUGrid server, regardless of the DDOS protection in place.