Element Moving Lights Programming & Some Basics

Those are big questions, Brooklin.
running ques or "busking" live is one of the basic questions. Answer: it depends.
Do you have time to cue the entire show? is there a tech rehearsal period for each band?
If answers are no, then you're more likely going to busk it. (make changes manually during the show).

Create different groups (all 250s, All LEDS, All Blinders, and then different pairings (outside pairs, inside pairs, DS groups, US groups, triplets, random groups).
Put up a Direct Select field of groups on a screen.

Set up the Focus Points, Colour Palettes, Beam (edge and gobo) palettes, and a few presets (combinations of all of these).
Put these on Direct Selects on a screen.

THis is all about accessing your design elements, either for live playback, or to build your cues.

Build a few base cues, or looks, or subs, that are your Go To looks; blue out, a look for the MC between bands. these will give you someplace to go on stage while you reset or clear out cues or manual commands.

to your questions:
a)
a lamp can have just a movement effect applied to it, or just a colour effect, or it can multiple effects stacked onto it (moving in a figure 8, with a colour scroll, and an intensity effect )...
Or a single effect can have both movement and intensity, or movement and colour (make an absolute effect, step 1 is ON, step 2 is position A, step 3 is off, Step 4 is Position B). Light will turn on, sweep to a position, turn off, and reset. a separate colour effect can be added on top of this, or just a static colour.

Don't jam too many things into 1 effect (IMHO). leave it so you can apply the separate elements as you like (build on the fly).

b) Effect x {BPM} 180 Enter sets the Beats per minutes for the effect (if you know the BPM).

With effect running: Effect x Learn Time enter enter enter . . . . to the beat, and press learn to exit. this is a live way to set BPM.

With effect running: effect x learn Time Time enter enter enter. . . . .. to beat, press learn to exit. this will set the step time to the beat.

c) cues, effect, preset, (all record targets) can be numbered to the 1000s: cue 10.123 is valid.

d) Sneak only works with manual changes. If the data (level, position, colour) is in red on the screen, that is a manual entry, and can be cleared with Sneak enter.
If the channel data is yellow (from a sub), or Blue, Green, or Magenta (from a cue playback), then Goto Cue 0, Goto Cue Out, to clear everything.
1-250 @ 0 for intensity only (intensitys will turn red, and Sneak enter will send them back to the cue or sub level)
1 -250 Home enter to clear position, colour, beam data.

Have fun.

Keep it simple.

good luck.
Andrew

This is awesome! Thanks for the great advice!

This is musical theatre - so its just a two act show with a lot of songs.    About 70% of them require the moving lights and blinders - the others are just using the usual stage grid.   

Ideally, I'd like to cue the entire show - the fact that I can go to 1000 decimal points on my cues makes it easier I guess.    So i'll just set up the groups like you suggested - set my focus, intensity, beam, and color using my palettes - add an effect if necessary.    Set it to loop - and then let the operator hit the cue to move to position 2.   

Thanks!