You are right. But we should also consider that Sam's release (v0.175) then slowed its pace because of the animations and also because of that thing about merging the two scenes he said it took some time (and he never explained). If what he said about having already prepared everything for the animation(s) so that they can be worked in parallel is true, then **maybe** this one will have a more "steady" pace. We will see.
Here is the % progress wrt the production days (counting from the first post with a change in % to have a common baseline for all) where I highlighted the current v0.185 and Sam's v0.175 for reference.
View attachment 2432738
The other question is the number of renders for this event. Since this time he planned ahead he should already have a good ballpark of the size of the event.
If we play the usual game of trying to guess the final number of renders from the graph of the number of renders Vs production days to align the different "paces", here are some hypothesis for
250 renders (it would be a very slow pace in terms of render/days)
View attachment 2432748
300 renders (it would be aligned or close to the previous release v0.180 which had all the problems we know in terms of production)
View attachment 2432750
350 renders (it would be getting closer to the past releases)
View attachment 2432753
400 (it **seems** a reasonable amount for a pace in his previous standard)
View attachment 2432754
450 (another record breaking release? It would be close to v0.175, at least initially because the latter then had a change in pace)
View attachment 2432756
So something in between 400 and 450? Another big one?