AiCS3: Swatches with various tints causing confusion and extra work

Question

I'm working on a bunch of highly complex infografics (not allowed to post them here) and each graphic has one base color (CMYK). This base color is used in various tints (100%, 80%, 50% etc).
While it's simple to recolor all objects of one Color Fill with another swatch by replacing the currently used swatch (Opt+drag on), it's not that simple with tints. It always applied the 100% when draging a 50% swatch onto another one and then I have to manually select each one and change the tint, so I might just as well create a new swatch for these objects and apply them to each.
As explained the graphics are quite complex and require intensive digging through the layers pallette (locking/unlocking, visible/not visible, Text, Storke/Fill etc.). For example some tints have to be the same as the background. If I want to change them all at once, I can't just change the tint of the swatch, as that only allows me to create a new swatch with the new tint.
I'd love to be able to just change the tint of the swatch and update all objects with that Fill and Stroke. On top of that I often find myself accidently changing the actual 100% swatch after about an hour or two, (not sure how) and thus losing the tie to the objects with the 100% Fill applied.
Any tips? Thanks!
Ps, the tints have to be based on the 100% swatch so I can update the whole graphic with one adjustment of this swatch.

Answer 1

You are making it more complicated then it is save the View before unlocking or running the action. then when you are finished you select the view and all your layers and objects are relocked assign a keyboard shortcut.
I think you are viewing this from a slant and if you could look more head on you will see that this is not working the way you expect but it is more powerful.
For instance with replacing a global swatch regardless of whether you want the objects color to change or not it changes, there is not way to prevent it. With recolor art you can.
With recolor art you can change art in harmonies so you can see live selections of the relative tones but in different parts of the spectrum, you simply have not looked at the feature.
Hopefully one day it will be a panel and that will make it more appealing to you.
Also your example in 1 that is one of my feature request to have the object assigned a mapping code so you could always get back to the original or assign the code to a new color so it will fill only the object thus assigned.
For instance the live color might automatically assign a tag each color of the original then if you assigned tat code to a color it would be applied to that object(s) the color could be assign to more then one object with a different code as well. This would live update in your art if you need the original colors for the object there would be such a feature even after saving and closing and reopening the art. I think this tagging is the real answer.
If you have a limited number of colors it is really not that big a problem but if you had a lot of colors then the swatch panel is way to difficult and I found if the r t is complicated then you end up changing the color of objects you did not want to change and the even select all same colors did not work because you did not want to do this.
That is why I like to point out that to unlock all is not necessarily something you will always be doing and that live color has more power because you can select what you want to color. The swatch approach is very limited and in the end very time consuming.