[mannykannot]

You are right - while there may be a simpler FSM that is equivalent to the one you have, the irreducible complexity that can arise from apparently simple rules is a feature of the problem domain. FSMs are part of the solution domain, and the best you can hope for in the solution domain is to avoid making things more complicated than they have to be. That does not rule out there being alternatives to FSMs that are easier to reason about.