Hi All,
I posted the question on SMP and apparently this is by design (I'll ignore the fact that this design was probably not well thought out).
Fiori 2.0 has a App Store style solution which will address this I'm sure; but for now, I'm just lucky I'm dealing with 1 language and can sort this correctly for end users.
In other words; plan your id's carefully. And if you have a remote tile id you can't change like Smart Business Tile Catalog; you'll need to plan around it by making multiple roles with different menu sort orders (yay!).
Bring on Fiori 2.0 App Store Catalog!
Cheers,
Matt