Overlapping in Plexus

Hello all,

I'm am currently working on a project, in which we used plexus to try and populate a particle field around a 3d (looks flat in shot from moving to show text) box.

now this is going to be a double barreled query, as there are two problems that keep propping up:

problem one: we want the plexus particles to move around the box, disappearing when it flows behind, I've looked at this one a little bit and seen that I could use a depth map to effect the particles somehow, but I was wondering if anyone has also done something like this and knows a workaround of such.

Problem two: we're using sprites to propagate the sphere spinning around with icons, however at the apex of the sphere, a lot of the icons are merging together and creating a bit of a mess. Is there any way to space out the clusters near each end of the sphere.

Screenshots bellow to hopefully help with visualization.

Thank you all in advance and apologies for the long post.