Noob CP Lighting Controller question

[atomikbohm]

I'm at the planning stage of my 1st cp and want to make sure I'm not going to waste time and money on a noob mistake so bear with me please.

I've been researching lighting controllers and I've read that I can have the controls that are used by a game light up when the game is loaded (so very cool).  My question is on a 4 player cp is it possible to have only p1 and p2 controls light up when a 2 player game loads or do all the player buttons come on regardless?

[ivwshane]

Typically it is based off of home many players that particular games supports. So if you have a four player game then all four controls will light up, if you only have a one player game then only players 1's control will light up.

[atomikbohm]

I'm planning on having 20 or 22 player buttons, 2 or 3 trackball buttons and an illuminated tackball  for a max of 26 RGB LEDs.  While keeping an eye on the price tag of my panel, I had the thought of wiring all of the like buttons on the same circuit (i.e. button 1 for all 4 players on the same led controller outputs) and putting a diode and replay on the "common ground"-cg (not sure cg terminology is correct) for each player station.  Then using the LED controller to operate the relay.  There by allowing me to disable the player stations that won't work for a giving game.  This would allow me to use 1 LED Controller vs 3 (if my math is right).  All of this boils down to 2 questions ...

1) Will this work with out frying my LED controller?  I concerned about hot switching the load while the controller is active.  ... and any thing else I'm not thinking of 

2) How difficult would it be to have the controller power 1 output for each active player station instead of powering up or down each player station (I assume this is the default of most of the software available).

Thanks for any help the community can offer.  My wife will be very happy if I can cut my led controller costs in a third