So after finally getting the complex hair system to work (more of less), I've decided not to use it. It's a bit too complicated and a bit too performance intensive. Add to that, it broke the 3rd party hair system. I've submitted the issue to that dev, but apparently it'll take a while to fix.
I've gone back to the older style settings with blendshapes as seen at the top. It looks a little goofy right now, especailly not having any bangs, but I wanted to make sure that they whole thing was going to work before I spent a bunch of time creating hair styles. It works well. Now I'm off to create hair styles. :D
If you want to see a demo of the complex hair style that I've, let's say "shelved", it can be found here: https://vimeo.com/203436411