If you invoke the ISM (Independent Support Motion) procedure (by defining restraint groups) then you must also define the "psuedo-static" anchor displacement value. If you leave this displacement value blank, CAESAR II will compute a default value based on the last spectrum value defined. So in actuality, your cases 1 and 2 above are really different.

Also note that when you specify a node increment of 1, you're still only loading the restraints in the "start - stop" range, even though you're incrementing the node numbers by 1.