Auditing the "(x)" construction

I am beginning to think that the apparent economy of the “(x)” construction is illusory, and that the space it saves is not worth the cost it demands in player memory/attention. Feel free to move this into the RB thread if you think it fits best there, but as it’s more UX/UI than rules intepretation, I thought to open a new thread and sketch out my experience. The “(x)” construction saves (often…