Hi Peregrine. I think everything depends on your radio. For example with the Tamiya tanks, the functions are suposed to be used with the gimbals and the trims, (such a primitive way... Well, primitive way for primitive electronics, but that's another story) the thing is you can program your radio like I did, so you wont use the gimbals anymore for the extra functions and you will use the switches.
I dont know if it is possible with some boards where you need to be a ninja master with your fingers like with Clark stuff, but in some of them it really works.
As you know Im using ASP2 boards, so I can asing everithing like I want... But, yep, my vote is to yes, I want to be able to program the radio exactly like I want on every aspect,
Anyway it really surprises me that people loves to spend thousands of hours and bags and bags of dough making an increible looking tank but they forget about the electronic stuff. Makes me think that most of the tanks are self queens or they really run them hardly ever. I love having thousands of functions and sounds like we have in the ASPs.