Yep, the above. What is best practice.
Also where should init of global variables happen...imagining in the main patch as everything else is descendant?

You can use the [value] (alias [v]) object for that. If you're only planning on running one instance of your patch at a time, then you can use the [init] or [loadbang] objects to load any one of the [value] objects--the rest will automatically update.

There is also an init setting on most of the GUI objects, which comes in handy from time to time.

cool!

for things that aren't numbers: http://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/7633/dynamic-value-store/4