Is not supporting merged sets (more specifically the clones within each set) a design decision or just something that no one’s gotten around to yet? I don’t have any big expectations here but I couldn’t find the answer searching the forums and thought it worth asking.
I understand that they would create issues with playlists for various reasons, but something like the current “Game.zip#Game.sfc” setup for zipped ROMs could conceivably be implemented, only pointing to each clone folder rather than individual files. And then either a custom DAT for importing or some parsing. I know it’s probably a lot more work than it seems but I don’t see why the playlists would have to be a stopping point.