Nice post,
Now i didn't go altcoin mining, except i am mining in scrypt which is actually like you said mining for ltc but pays with btc and i actually investing in sha-256 by compounding because i find it faster to keep the money working
However for me personally i do prefer mining scrypt for the long term now i have 14MH on scrypt and 180 GH on sha-256 which i actually made them basically through scrypt income
I have explained some argument about cost effective comparing sha-256 and scrypt here
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@malekalmsaddi/sha-256-vs-scrypt-mining
I like Scrypt too, I hope to keep upgrading both