It's my friends beers that turn dark, mine stay the same colour until the keg kicks. Flavor does definitely drop off slightly.
I have the 7g brewmaster bucket so unfortunately can't dump off yeast. Would love to have this function. I think at least for the first dry hop I'll do as you suggest with the exception of I will put my hops in a hop spider which drops in through the 3" opening. I brewed a session IPA a few weeks ago and put the hops in loose, never again, transfer was an absolute disaster even with a cold crash. I couldn't rotate the racking arm as the yeast settled around it and wouldn't turn.
I had an experiment ready to go where I made a floating dip tube like in the Fermzilla. Only did one dry run with water. It did work but I decided when filling the fermenter to abandon it for now until further testing. This would enable me to dry hop loose. I do a few more trial runs when this beer is fermented.