If you find out it's possible to modify the staging list in some ways, see if you can have it hide the icons for parts that are unaffected by staging (ie: struts, generic structural parts, etc). Trying to make sense of staging when you have a ton of parts can be exasperating, especially since the grouping of parts in the stage list seems to be rather buggy right now (three symmetrically placed RCS thrusters might have two grouped together, with one by itself for some reason).