The nomenclature and range of options/settings and their interactions in RL can make it a daunting app to really feel comfortable with. Many users have posted many questions about it, so your feelings are pretty common ones.
So very true, with the built-in and community developed apps/drivers with unique and overlapping capabilities. There are many paths available, so there is always some potential to get a bit lost in the options.
Basic Rule's strength is the way it allows you to easily build straightforward automations like yours in an simple to use/understand point-and-click flow. The results from that app and RL (or RM, etc.) will be the same if both are done correctly, of course. It comes down to personal preference and how much time you have/want to spend figuring out more complex apps like RL and RM. As I noted you can import Basic Rules into Rule Machine to see how they are laid out there, which can help getting more comfortable w/RM over time.
Like many of us I'm a former ST user. My process moving from ST to HE was:
Bring over all my exsiting WebCore pistons and use them with the HE community WebCore app. (This was before WebCore was an officially supported/built-in app.)
Re-do my other ST automations in Simple Automations (the pre-cursor of Basic Rules) Groups and Scenes & Motion and Mode Lighting apps (pre-cursors to RL), and the Notifications app to get used to how HE apps/logic flowed, nomenclature, etc.
Slowly move over my WebCore automations into HE apps over time. No real need to do this but wanted to get "good" at using HE apps so I was fully comfortable w/the new platform's apps (built-in and community-developed).
As we like to say around here, choice is good. (We really should have a t-shirt made...)
It controls which devices are used by Activation and Off. For example, I have some lights in the main part of the house that are always on; I want them turned on and set appropriately whenever the trigger fires. However, there are other lights which are only occasionally turned on as needed.
I don't want these other lights turned on by default -- but if they're turned on, they still need to turn off when RL is triggered to turn lights off.
Well the lights didnt work again the way they should have but I suspect that Ive been futzing with the rule so often that I screwed up the scheduling or something?
I decided to just try it in @danabw basic rules setup instead. I set things up late last night so obviously the sunset portion and the fountain turn off portion never had a chance to fire off but I was surprised to find that the sunrise portion didnt work this morning?
Does the entire rule need to be triggered for any of the entires to work or would it, as I was expecting, pick up on anything thats hasn't happened yet?
I actually completely bailed on Room Lighting for the time being even though I said I wasn't giving up!!
Basic rules, for what I am doing here was just so much easier I'm going to stick with that (if it works tonight) for the time being.
I think I need to slow down a bit as others have suggested here and do more basic things as I was getting to the point that I just wanted to plug my SmartThings hub back in and be done with it!
What happens if I make some edits to the rule mid day? Would that make it not work for the rest of the day? How about if I paused it or if there was a power outage or other reason my hub restarted?
Usually editing a rule resets it, so any pending actions would not happen until it triggers again. You can manually press Run Actions in RM to start it again.
If its paused it wont trigger.
If the rule is running with pending actions and the hub restarts any pending actions will not happen unless it re-triggers. The reason for this is if a hub was offline for an extended time, when it comes back up there could be hundreds of pending rule actions to try to "catch-up" which could cause even further problems.
This is only true in the specific case of if the "pending action" is a scheduled job and the scheduled time was missed (e.g., because the hub was off/rebooting/etc.). In general, a reboot will not affect pending actions in a rule. Scheduled jobs that are still in the future will be executed, and pending rule actions that create things like event subscriptions will remain as they were.
So, in perhaps most cases, things should work as expected. But...this is a common misconception, or at least a common question.
I was using RM to control my kitchen and dining room lights, but got frustrated with RM because any time I opened a rule to just look at it, not edit it, the "wait untils" got messed up and would not run that night.
I do notice that RL does NOT have this problem and I can edit the RL settings while it is running.
Even in RM, if I clicked on run actions, it would still "restart" and stop at the first "wait until" was encountered, which meant that it was waiting for 24 hours, and not continue on.
RL doesn't have this problem, and has TONS of options and features that CAN become overwhelming. The options do NOT have to be used, but they are there IF you want them, and frankly are kinda handy in some cases.
Like Hardax, I am determined to give RL a try and play with it!
Like Hardax said:
I found this to be try in RM, and that is why I am trying RL.
JTP10181 stated this fact as well..
(We really should have a t-shirt made...) 
