you have to set up separate red, green, and blue lights and rotate them all funky. Is this normal?
No! Problem with normal maps in Blitz is that it supports only world space normal maps and that means trouble lightingwise... tangent space would be so much easier for the user if implemented correwctly. Cubemap lighting together with normal maps work somewhat but having rotating planet and sun can be problematic.
Normal maps are NOT like your average bumpmaps; they work differently and are more prone to tech issues. I don't have any normal maps on my planet yet because I have not been able to solve the moving light and planet issue satifactorily yet.
Being able to include / exclude objects from / to lights would be handy, like using reverse lighting on citylights... but that would require a lot of base tech coding from Mark.