So I do want to work torwards making 2.4X have no take backs relative to 2.3X. To that end, yes I will continue to put in (significant) time on making ties work to everyone's expectations and also keep filling in the gaps w.r.t. things like pond mode, etc. Have no fear, this remains a primary goal for me. That said, I want to make some points:
1) It's a lot more fun to write new code then it is to try to understand someone elses code and find/fix the bugs there-in. I'm happy to spend significant time on the latter, but to keep my sanity and interest, I have to spend some percentage of each each release on my own stuff. Each release from me will be a balance. Each may have some new stuff, but also will hopefully continue to take steps towards no take backs.
2) The physics of 2.4 are just very different than 2.3X and changing this is not within the scope of things I am willing to do in 2.4. There will be cases where sysvars work correctly in both versions, but the results will be different. Inchworm for example, depends upon the underlying tie physics of 2.3 - that ties have a certain default springyness, that bots have a certain mass, that setting the tie angle or tie length when one bot is fixed torques or pushes the other bot in a certain way. It is quite possible (indeed, I beleive it to be the case today for inchworm) that all the underlying sysvars that the bot uses work and work correctly, but that the marco behaviour is different due to the underlying physics differeces in the two versions. I am willing to enertain suggestions to close such gaps, but only up to a point. I'm not sayign this is the case yet, but at some point, we may need to see a 2.4 inchworm which in order to work "correctly" has to do things a little different, say set the tie stiffness explicitly becuase the default beahves irrconcilably different than that in 2.3X.
Those points made, I will continue to plug away at closing the gap.