well, working yes and working no. i still hadn't gotten around the problem you've just outlined, that i'd need to declare the variables first before doing anything to them.
i notice in another thread that what i need to do is pretty much impossible - and (it seems) illogical, captain - as i need the editor-defined names of the loons to be able to access them. using
group player select _i spits out 'WEST Alpha Black:6' or whatever, which naturally throws up an error.
i got the overall effect i wanted though. the initial intention was to be able to teleport a group, in formation. thus, i needed the x/y offset to be stored and retrieved, but all depending on how many loons there were in any group.
the shoddy workaround i've arrived at is using the player as the setpos centre and using a randomised sin/cos to throw the loons around him/her. they soon drift back into formation, and (so far) there haven't been any messy collisions. i did want to setpos them in a perdy circle, but then i'd have to increment the angle according to their number in the group, which brings us back to the first problem.
meh. it works. i'll leave it at that. thanks for the input anyways