User Templates for Network Home Folders

I apologize in advance if this has been covered. I've been searching high and low and have found little mention of this. We are about to implement an AD-OD environment using home folders on a windows server running extremeZ-IP for the home folders and all user data in Active Direcctory. Our Xserve is going to be used strictly for group management. On my build I have various customizations in the user templates. I had presumed that OS X populates an empty home folder automatically using user templates. Sad but sad, it doesn't - at least not in any way I've been able to intuit. Worse, it populates the home folders with weird default preferences that I can't seem to track down. Example: I have deleted com.apple.dockfixup.plist but the same default Apple dock appears when faced with an empty home folder. Unless I want to enforce a dock at all times, Mail.app, itunes, iphoto, imovie, etc will always clutter up my users' docks. I know that many prefs can be managed from WGM, but there are documents, preferences, bookmarks and such that I would like to be in every home folder by default. Doing this manually for every user seems cumbersome. I was about to give up and create a duplicate user database in WGM just so I could use "Create Home Folder" but realized that it wants to be pointed to a Mac, not a Windows file server. If anyone has any insight on this, I would greatly appreciate it. thanks =c=