Marty, I agree with you. Jason, you also. Of course my comments earlier in the post where to have independent FX fixtures within Catalyst that can be assigned either to a Mix or a Layer allowing for stacking.
Jason, I feel ya on adjusting colors in almost every cue. I deal with that quite a bit. It's been especially tough since one of my clients realized that with an LFG4, catalyst is sort of like a switcher. (I don't even want to begin telling you what kind of pain in the ass it is to run a rig of lights w video cues as well as using my desk to "switch" video inputs dynamically).
Just a note though, my suggestion is simply this. Take the top layer in the stack and make it the black 001 file and throw it on an intensity fader and you have an instant dynamic gain control. (Yes at the loss of a layer to do it).