Just to be clear, by convoluted I was referring to the steps required to say, apply a 50% transparent line stroke on a shape that has a linear fill. To do this, you have to set the shape to have flat transparency, set the value so that the line stroke transparency changes, and then change the transparency type back to say linear to customise the fill transparency. It's just a shame there isn't an independent control for the line stroke transparency. But who knows what the next version will bring.

By grouping an object and applying transparency, the fill and line stroke are treated as one solid object and thus you can apply linear transparencies to line strokes that way. It would be nice thinking about it, to be able to apply other complex transparency types to lines independently of the fill too, as standard.