that's not quite bad news.  it's to be expected.

so  alternate diffuse and alternate spec only transform their input by  multiplying it by the color.  unlike the root diffuse node, which internally applies the diffuse shader.  if you want to control the diffuse shader, as in VSS, where i believe the diffuse and specular values are have an inverse relationship to their shading (not simply their values, i think to mimic the fresnel effect), you plug your texture into a diffuse node and all the proper maps and values into a specular node, do all your transformations explicitly, add them together, and take the total input and give it to the alt diffuse. you just don't have as much control using the root diffuse node and diffuse value.

this means at base that they work pretty much like the ambient node, and other nodes.  iirc, ambient and alt diffuse produce exactly the same effect with the same color plugged into them.

that said, if you're using a very simple shader, as i've noted in the forums before, if you just keep your diffuse value and specular value so their sum is  somewhere around 1, you'll do a lot for its realism.