Yeah, templates make that much easier. Since templates seem to be a combination of everything, if I can blanket apply it to all the rigs that would work.
Weird bug I've noticed, when I start AM and go to miners tab and use Ctrl+A to select all the miners it crashes AM. Also you can't globally stop all miners. Say selecting them all and selecting stop IF one of the miners is already stopped. Small thing, but you have to use ctrl to unselect some of them so you can stop the others.
Affinity is another needed option. Although understanding affinity and how it selects CPUs is a bit of a chore. There is a mathematical equation for it.
The crash bug will be fixed in the release later today. The new release will also have Process Priority and Affinity settings (you will find it in the properties for a Managed Miner, Environment section).
As you noticed the operations available (start or stop) will only be available if all selected miners have that option enabled. I do understand the scenario you descibe, so I will put it on the list to look into.