Backtracking a bit regarding Moots. Polyphonic cables can have anywhere from 0 to 16 channels. If you patch a cable with 0 channels to an input, the input treats it as though there isn’t a cable there at all. Moots is a switch that converts a poly signal with N channels into a 0 channel cable on demand.
It is not possible to create a module that turns an individual channel within a poly cable off and leaves the other channels alone. So if you wanted to automate the inFix solution you indeed need 16 independent cables that can be “Mooted”, which requires 4 Moots modules. If you don’t want all those cables, then that avenue is a dead end.
I think I have a good solution - Venom Bernoulli Switch. I don’t think anyone has caught on yet to how versatile this fully polyphonic module can be. For your case it can function as a polyphonic switch. There are many different ways it could work for you. I will describe just one.
Start with the default initialized configuration, which has the mode set to Swap.
In the module context menu, set the “Polyphony control” to “All inputs”
Patch your default 16 channel poly signal into the A input. That represents your default sequence. Then patch a second cable with 16 candidate channels of alternate values into the B input. It could be the output of a 16 channel polyphonic random sample and hold.
Patch the A output to your poly sequencer (whatever you call it), and a mono trigger signal to the Trigger input.
Set the probability to a low value like say 5%.
Now every time it receives a trigger, each of the A channels will have a 5% chance of being replaced by the corresponding B channel. Done!
There are many, many variations for this use case. For example, you can use a polyphonic trigger signal to selectively trigger individual channels. You can use a poly probability CV to independently set the probability for each channel. You can change the mode of operation. In your case I think you want either Swap mode or Gate mode. I don’t think Toggle mode would work well for your application. Read the Bernoulli Switch documentation for more details. And don’t be afraid to ask a question, perhaps best as a new topic.