For cover stories, all available layout options (except "1 tile") will always load 2 tile rows - although users often only want one row (e.g. 4 tiles in a row).
The second row is therefore often hidden via CSS, but still causes load for the server, since tiles cannot be configured as "empty".
That means it would be very desirable if you could provide 1-row layout variants or make tiles configurable as "empty".
Since cover stories generate a relatively high load on the system, such an option would probably reduce the load on the overall system considerably.