Wow! I am going to test this setup up in my other scene. I kinda found a work around as well. I ended up Caching the particle sim, then baked the cloner that had a null under the balloons into an alembic. Then I placed the strings under those nulls then did the rope and connector tag. They follow, but wondering if your set up will be even faster and look better. Thanks noseman... Crazy getting help from a celebrity in the C4D community!

@noseman Here is a rough setup. This is before I took the string out of the cloner and tried baked stuff to then add the string in later. The goal is/was to have everything work inside the particle simulation. NosemanExample.c4d

I have a simulation of these balloons but no strings. its a particle emitter emitting and then I have a cloner with the balloons inside using the particle group. similar to nosemans set up in this video: https://youtu.be/qNyNbmCtImA?is=nzAEzyQLMcyaZ_f4

The strings weren‘t behaving properly within the cloner.

so I baked the scene, particles and cloner, thinking all the balloons would be separate and then I’ll just zero the strings out and simulate that. but its one baked cloner object with all these balloons and none of them are separated.

so how do I attach strings to this setup? Do I do something different? or do I have to hand place every string?

yes I have tried baking as alembic, baking object, baking scene, etc., and nothing is working.