I am wondering if anyone has had success using the recommended Holy Grail approach (shooting in manual and making 1 EV exposure jumps as needed) with LRTimelapse for doing a full transition from daylight to moonless night with stars. If so I'd like to hear from you and see your results.

I am sure it can be done with dedication, but the point is that a full day time to starry sky sequence will have an EV range of more than 20. So that's a lot of time standing by the camera and watching the LCD (carefully since under clear skies and dry atmosphere, the exposure is going to change pretty fast), lots of adjustments to make, both in camera and then in LR.

It works very well, there is no other solution I'm aware of to do this in that quality. And a time lapse from full day to dark night certainly needs some dedication - yes. You can as well use 2EV steps, and it's not crucial to always get the 1EV too exact - you have a lot of dynamic range in your RAW files.