delaying per point.... using CHOPS

For some reason, the timeshift node doesn't work within For Loops. Eg. you have a bunch of points going from A to B and you want to offset each point by an arbitrary number of frames.

Matt Estella mentions -
The core issue is that the for-begin node doesn't split and cook the geo as you'd expect. Instead you have to set the begin node into 'fetch input', so it just grabs everything, then use a split sop to get the element you want, using the metadata node to read the value or iteration detail attribute.

To be honest, I don't really understand the problem & his example file doesn't quiiiiite do what I want. One of his other ones does though, albeit with a little tweaking. Bastian J Schiffer's video is very useful.
(https://vimeo.com/280537925)

At SOP level, make an integer point attribute called something like "timeshift" with some values. Make a null after this and call it TO_CHOPS


Then what we want to do is access a point attribute in CHOPS. The method isn't immediately obvious.
Make a chopnet, and two geometry nodes. Point them to TO_CHOPS  and make sure they're both "animated" and not "static. With the first one (geometry-transform), leave the default P, tx,ty,tz values... With the second (geometry-timeshift), set the Attribute scope to "timeshift" and the Rename scope to "timeshift" too.



Next make a channel wrangle. This behaves like a point wrangle, for the most part..there are, however, some CHOPS-only variables. Stick the geo-transform into input 1, and the geo-timeshift into input2.
Type this into the vex-box -

V=chinput(0,C, I+chinput(1,C,I));

"V" stands for value.
"chinput" is like the "point" function, but here it fetches channels instead of attributes. There're a few ways to use the function, but here we're going for the chinput(0,C,I) easy mode...

The first 0 is the 0th input (geo-transform), it fetches C, the channels (which are tx, ty, tz) and....
"I" is the index/iteration...we modify this by chinputting the geo-timeshift input and grabbing it's channels (the timeshift attribute)
Finally add a null, name it OUT (ignore the math/noise node for now, that's some other crap)
Jump up to SOP level and put a channel node to the TO_CHOPS, switch it to Animate mode. The default value of t[xyz] and P are fine here.

Your points should now be delayed....
You could make the delay a bit more fancy by adding a multiplier, either to the expression above, or in the bit where you define the timeshift attribute in the first place..