got it looking perfect! here’s what I did:
1) turned the falloff from box to linear…
2) played with the position, learning the further it is in negative z space, the more spread out the clones become…
3) also discovered that if you rotate the random effector on y axis and then move in z space, it will add the clones in from left to right (or right to left depending on how the effector is turned)…
thanks so much for your help again 🙂