Have you tried setting up pam_mount?
pam_mount: http://pam-mount.sourceforge.net/
No.
I’d prefer to wait and find/see cure for bug that stops the login as it’s meant to work with encrypted home directory option and default login with plasma desktop.
Like I said - works just fine when not using the encrypted home directory option on install.
Likely an easy fix to developer wishing to look into it. (hopefully).
Seems like a fairly stable build once you get past the manual sound card setup. SO FAR.
So from past experience I’m thinking I’ll stick with stable and not rock the boat too much. Too much tweaking on my end often causes stuff to break! lmao 
Only other things I’d like to see improved so far besides login bug is to fix install so it’s not so slow to install and buggy to reboot out of install when finished.( most other similar distros to this install far faster & smoother to be frank)
I’m getting a little hang up on booting out of Netrunner. It hung up once and I had to just kill it with the power button.Not every time, so I hope it doesn’t get worse.
I’ll do software/security update tonight and see if that fixes it up any more.
NOR COMPLAINING - just input/opinion.
Good part is it is nice desktop. Nice default tweaks to Firefox and other things out of the box. Plasma looks like it’s going places. And it’s easy to see all the good work put into Netrunner 17.
So, I’m sticking around to see where it goes.
Thanks again for reading & helping.
CHEERS
Well, it’s not actually Plasma desktop as much as it would be SDDM since the home folder would need to be decrypted prior to loading Plasma. Besides pam, you could also use systemd’s automount to decrypt the home folder on a per user instance.
If your interested, here are the SDDM release notes: https://github.com/sddm/sddm/blob/master/ChangeLog
And issue tracker: https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues
This issue may be relevant: https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/346
and this as well: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sddm/+bug/1440151
Ahhhhhh yes …you have shown me the rabbit hole and i’ve gone down it. 
Last 2 links were the most interesting.
I’ll attempt a bit of patching and see where it goes.
Does look like a sddm issue to be sure.
Looks like I have a few options to try.
Maybe I’ll install Netrunner 17 on an extra laptop and play with issue that way for now as my desktop install is working pretty good now as is.
Be way better to break a test install over & over if needed.
Thanks again.
Thanks for your patience.
Cheers