I've just tried the groups and scenes app and putting my 'gone to bed' devices in it, they all turn off OK.
Nice one @stephen_nutt. How did this pass me by. 
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I really just want to click a button to turn on everything and hold it to turn off.
It's a building with two small open floors ( there is no "floor" on second floor. ) one floor has 20 lights ( each pair of two lights attached to a dual fibaro or aeotec relay ) another floor has 8 lights attached to 8 aeotec dimmers and 5 blinds connected to single fibaro relays.
The hubitat C-7 is within 30m of any of these devices, most of them are actually closer and on the z-wave properties page most of the devices are directly connected. A couple go trough another device and none go trough more than one. Anyway, it's really not a lack of connection as the devices when actuated on the dashboard work perfectly.
So you put them all in one list?
Yes. I turned on about half of the ones shown in my screenshot above (10) and they all turned off when the button was pushed.
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Ok,
I will wait for a dev to come in and comment about the feature request.
The reality is that none of these work arounds don't seem to be deterministic. And I really want the damm things to really turn on and off as requested by the rule, so I think that the feature request of having the rule check the end state and apply corrections if needed is really needed to have some sort of guarantee that it happens.
@JasonJoel did this using Node Red but I don't know if the function of that could be translated into a Hubitat Rule. Maybe he can comment.
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Really, if something is failing at the protocol level (the hub is sending the message, but not all messages are making it to devices) the only recourse you really have is to test for that, and try the command again.
I've long thought that there should be a "verify command" option in hubitat rules and RM that just magically takes care of this behind the scenes, but there isn't so you would have to do it in an RM rule with logic.
I have to do similar things on other hubs as well, for the record. If I blast out a bunch of zwave commands at the exact same time in home assistant, sometimes they don't all make it there either. Just is what it is.
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I'm really just a simple man with a simple wish. I'm not a programmer, I'm just a user. Hopefully this will be integrated on the rules engine.
Never hurts to ask / put in the request. 
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@stephen_nutt's method is probably your best bet. You can still use your simple rule, you just turn on and off the group light instead of each individual light. Once you make the group it becomes a device. I had to do this as I do the same thing at night.
I originally had a goodnight routine that turned off all my lights. I had each individual light listed in a RM rule. Like you saw, it mostly worked. Occasionally a light would be left on. When they added metering to the group setup I decided to give that a try. I set metering to 100ms and my lights off routine has been rock solid since.
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Yes, using groups + metering can definitely help if the issue is packets getting lost. Good point.
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This is with what you are presented when you open www.hubitat.com
Experience
Home Automation that is
Local, Reliable, Fast, and Private.
This is Home Automation As It Was Meant To Be
Hubitat is changing how people live with smart devices by enabling them to Elevate Their Environment.
By combining the advantages of local automation processing with cloud IoT connectivity, Hubitat's innovative Hubitat Elevation hub ensures personal data privacy and is more reliable and responsive than competitive cloud-based solutions. Hubitat Elevation is compatible with popular home automation devices, comes with a variety of built-in apps, and has an active user community to share ideas, insights and solutions.
I just hope they make good on their word. Rules checking if they ran ok and fixing what didn't seems to be a good way to go.
But you read that, and then use a "simple rule" and it doesn't work, and it kind of makes you think about the world we live on. Damm, here I am, ranting again.
The user community part is defensively true thou!
+1 for the group feature. i have groups that cover individual floors, and for all my devices. it is able to trigger a combination of zigbee and zwave+ devices with no issues
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ok, you haven convinced me that it's worth trying. will do that this week.
I had to set metering to 1000ms to have better luck when doing many things at once.
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It appears that this grouping and metering does not solve the issue. I mean, it may, as it has done to a couple of people that posted here, but it is not guaranteed that it will continue to work or that it will work for others.
As @JasonJoel said, the way to go is really to have the rule engine take care of this. From my very naive perspective, it doesn't seem that hard to implement: store state of devices before rule runs, compare state of devices after rules runs with desired state and redo commands that didn't go trough until desired state equals final state or until some retry threshold is reached.
While I certainly follow your logic (on wanting a "Verify" feature in RM, or at least for Scenes, to know they are "Set", which is already testable), I'd hasten to point out that such a feedback mechanism may face too many roadblocks to be workable in practice.
For example:
- A poorly implemented device may not issue a status response sufficiently quickly;
- An older non-Plus device me require Z-Wave polling that isn't set up yet;
- I've seen a dimmer whose connected light is ON but it reports OFF;
- "Verify" would need to know "when to stop asking", which in turn might keep the Rule "active" longer than intended, with downstream ramifications;
- Grouping (of devices) and Metering (of commands) both exist and address the underlying problem, so hypothetically should permit a manageable resolution;
I'm not here to warn "Careful what you wish for" since we've all had similar thoughts, but I am suggesting "It may not work the way you think" just so expectations are set accordingly.
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You can always have the rule run a second time after a few seconds (or more) of delay. As long as you are using a “group device “ with on/off optimization enabled, it will check the state of each device and only send commands to the devices that require it. That way the mesh isn’t burdened by needless commands being sent. This should get you the reliability you seek since you said your devices did report their states correctly.
Just make sure the delay is longer than the time it takes for the last device to report its status to the hub.
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The concerns you listed are very real and they all can be addressed by simply setting a toggle for the rule in question and a retry limit. You would only toggle the "verify status and fix" setting if your devices behave properly and the retry limit would take care of the time to stop trying.
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