Reference based Groups for Effects

I see what you mean by the philosophy of how the console works. Still, I don't see why you can't have a dynamic reference to a group, essentially in the background every time a step-based effect is recalled or played back, it should then do the lookup for the channels, this would allow you to update those reference channels within groups and it wouldn't break the philosophy of the desk referencing back to a channel.

For example, we had various step-based effects running sequences through various groups of cells in a LED batten... However, we wanted to dynamically try different groupings of cells and we didn't have a lot of time to try various looks. Of course, I could re-record an absolute effect on specific channels in a playback but I'd be forced to re-do every effect in every cue with the new groupings for every iteration we wanted to trial, as you can appreciate this would take a long time vs just updating groups.

And you could always add the function to do [Group] 1 {Make Abs} to add the channels absolutely into the effect... Kind of how it behaves at the moment, it's just you don't have the option to do anything other than Make Abs when adding channels.

But as you notice, the Coloumn says "Channels" not "Group".

So it makes sense for me.
you can use an Absoulte FX with you Group, to be more flexibel.
But you need to call the FX every time with [Group] 1  [Effect] 1 [Enter]
Because, as far a i know, EOS is always referencing down to a channel level, with every function in the Desk.

Interesting Idea, but it will kind of break the current philosophy