mira multitouch detect no touch+ gate, logic, latching help

just picked up mira to try out an idea i had for a gestural mixer thingy using 2 mira.multitouch panels each using 5 touch points to select which of 30ish sliders you want. Touches in the left panel are like adding +5. So 2 touches on left + 3 fingers would move 13th slider, 3 on left + 2 would be 17th and so on... (although i'd like to hook it up other stuff like zl.lookup or add more panels for additive synth partial drawing etc later... you could use concept for weird gestural/touch 26 character alphabet lookup or something :) )

the heat here is killing my brain though and i know i'm spacing on my max basics, sorry for silly questions:

gate is letting through all the values per touch and changing other sliders because even if i put down 3 fingers mira.multitouch sends touch count of 1 and 2 before 3. What is good method to let through the 'real' last number of touches only, with as little input lag as possible?

can i detect that there are no touches/all touch has been let go? because mira.multitouch touch count output remains on 1 meaning that gate 'latches' onto slider 6+ after 1 use. Non invasive way to automatically reset to 0? ...i set up a mechanism to swipe to reset to 0 because i like the latching in theory....

i'd like a mechanism to tap to 'latch' the last number of fingers pressed on right, i think by tapping in another panel (because tapping in same panel ends up registering another touch, but maybe i could delay it?) Anyway, because mira.multitouch doesn't output 0 for no touches i'm having trouble figuring out logic where/how to insert a taping action with what i have and because what i have is only half working to begin with ;) i didn't want to get ahead of myself if the core of what's there is not the way to go anyway. :)

thanks for help. :)

patch: