The only option I would see, when not using rules is to play with the visabillity= option in the sitemaps file. Take a look at the Worx binding by Nibi79 and how he used 4 different lines to get an elegant solution
Switch item=LandroidAction label="Action" mappings=[START="Start"] visibility=[LandroidStatusCode==0, LandroidStatusCode==1]
And to your second question, just trying to learn more about OH3 and keep finding that there are more elegant ways of solving problems and wanted to check before bashing out yet-another-rule.
Hear hear!