Hi,
here is a few notes to Team Render / DR support:
1. Right now, we are integrating distributed rendering with Team Render, but we also plan to implement Corona own DR (it won't be in A5 though)
2. With Team Render, there shouldn't be any limitation with shaders or features (everything that works in normal rendering should also work in TR).
3. Right now, even if we add our own DR, plugin will still be tied to C4D (many shaders are evaluated by C4D), meaning there wouldn't be any advantage in terms of C4D licensing. We have been talking about possibility to allow render nodes without C4D (i.e. use Corona standalone), but it would bring some limitations (some shaders would need to be baked etc..). Anyway, this is still in phase of discussion.
As of AO / other Corona shaders in OGL, I am working on some improvements to show something reasonable in viewport, e. g. in case of AO, it will simply show unoccluded shader (and will work even inside layer shader).