cry havoc

I agree it's quite an art form. There's the whole pacing issue with how you place the infodumps and how big a roadblock they may be. Infodumps slow things down and make people think about other things besides the driving pace in an action-oriented central plot. It can be like lovely charming meanders or maddening. As with cover art for books, you have technical demands on how much world-building detail you can get away with including. There's two axes of difficulty there, too. There's how much space you eat up with explanations (Clancy's hugely lengthy for a Twitter age) but also how difficult is it? For example, at what level of scientific knowledge do you pitch your explanations? You can be extremely concise if you use more technical language, and sometimes that works better to blind 'em with science. In some of the fantasy stuff you evoke the same effect because you're just handwaving with fancy phrases. "Okay, I'm convinced, I'll take your word for it, this part is bafflegab for the geeks, I don't need to worry about it." Some of the writers I really like are fabulous at inventing language that ought to be the correct terminology, that evoke odd combinations or funny ones. The really good ones build on some key terminology, where you get a hint from the name of something, and later there's some plot surprise built into that name. That could be pretty concise, but it's much more likely to suggest a tone of frivols and leisurely nonsense--it can be a bit like breaking the fourth wall if you get tooo cutesy.