The King stones I have used all require a bit of lapping, but not more so than equivalent grade stones in the same price/performance range. The 1000 requires more frequent lapping than the 6000 for sure, but its quick and easy to do - besides, equivalent Nortons, etc, require quite the same amount of maintenance. Ever tried a 400k synthetic? - you have to lap the damned thing before you even finish honing on it if you have much work to do.
Naniwas, along with shapton glass stones are, as most people must have gathered by now due to the many posts on the subject, dimensionally unstable to a degree - most serious honers will lap them before a session as they swell/shrink in different parts of the hone overnight. Don't believe me? Just leave the darkened swarf on and give a few laps the next day - you'll soon see high and low spots, doesn't matter how little you have used the hone. I would go as far as to suggest that just wetting the stone will start that differential movement, and furthermore it is not in the same area each time.
It might only be out to a tiny degree, but by the time you get to 16k and 30k and are we are talking about small micron sizes anyway, so it matters more at the high end of the range.
As for coticules taking some time to learn - they are no harder than any other hone - its just a bit of rock, right? There is absolutely no reason a novice shouldn't get a good edge of one as easily as with any other hone. It's true that you can adapt coticules to do a bit more work (if you have the tendency to masochism or a lot of time on your hands) and that you can use techniques like inducing a microbevel with a layer of tape to make the edge appear sharper - but you can do that with most other stones too providing they can cut and not just polish. Learning the eccentricities of any hone takes a while once you have mastered the basics - that's only common-sense.
The chinese 12k isn't as slow as you may be led to believe - start off with a slurry and you can cut the laps down by half. Just remember to finish on plain water.
The purpose of a diamond spritz on a spyderco is to make the stone into a 'superhone' as RW suggested and I implied - an aggressive cut can be had with coarse diamond spritz, then you work that out with a less coarse solution and finally finish with no diamond at all. All on one hone. Like a coticule on steroids.
Of course all diamonds leave a scratchy edge - that is their nature - they cut, they don't smooth..., but we are not talking about shaving with the edge left by a diamond compound but with an edge that has been refined further by other means, the most common being finishing with chrome oxide.
Sorry to disagree with virtually everything you have said Huxley, but I think a novice has to have both sides of the coin presented before he can make an informed choice.
Regards,
Neil