The "one weird object" thing is spot on in my experience. I used to cram in a whole backstory and three side characters and it just made everything stiff. Cutting the backstory and letting people fill in the gaps themselves gave me way better stuff, but your mileage may vary depending on who's reading it.

Heat gun changed everything for me too. That contact cement is the real secret though. Hot glue just melts and shifts while it cools. Plasti dip saved my first pauldron from looking like a dollar store toy. Cheap materials are fine if you put the work in.

...and that's exactly what happened to my buddy Steve last spring, except his app kept telling him everything was fine until he was literally boarding the wrong plane. He was at DFW, parked at gate A22 with his phone showing the same gate, and then he looked up and the board above his head had already flipped to a different city. He had to sprint across two terminals with his carry-on banging into people, and the plane door closed like two minutes after he got there. The gate agent actually told him that the app updates slower than the screens because the airlines push the changes to the airports first. So now he just watches the physical boards every few minutes, even if his phone says otherwise, and he treats the app like a suggestion, not the truth.