help with chases

This happens because of tracking if I understood your problem correct.

There's two ways to make the chase (intensity).

1) In Hog2 record the cues normal way and deselect the maintain state option in cuelist to prevent tracking calculated.
2) Record your cues and make sure in the next cue channels, you want to go off, are recorded at 0%. If you add something record it by using forward off, so the changes don't track to next cue

In Hog 3 it's pretty much the same, but the maintain state option is called cue only and there's a little difference in timing. In hog 2 channels are going off using fade time, but in H3 they use release time. So if you want to get proper fade timing it's better to record channels in cue and in the next record them using 0% and forget the cue only option. Add channels using forward off option...though this also creates a little problem in H3, cause new channels are recorded using forward off get an OFF (not 0%) value which have also a problem with timing.

Maybe a best way to make a intensity chase in H3 is to decide the what channels/fixtures and how many cues you are going to use and record them all using channels at 0% and after that start adding channels to cues.

This example is for simple chase where channels just go on and off.

If you have selected the cuelist to be a chase, the entire cuelist will be included in the chase. You can chase only specific consecutive cues in a cuelist, but you will do it using follow times and a link cue and not setting the cuelist to be a chase.

I am not sure what you are doing but if you are just starting it is probably easier to put the cue you do not want in the chase into a different fader.

If you want cues 1-4 to chase but nor cue 5, you can put a link cue after cue 4 and put a Wait time in cue 2-4 plus the link cue. You can read about his on page 61 of the Hog 2 manual.