darth_ender said:

Okay, these are some of the ideas I've come up with in order to meet the following shortcomings of the existing game:

1) Unpromoted pieces in general (though not always) should have some backward movement, but different and preferably weaker than their forward movement.

Definitely agree, especially if you go with permanent promotion.

2) Pieces need to be more offensive than defensive.

I agree for the most part, but I think there should be one mostly defensive piece in back, closer to the king.

3) The setup needs to also be geared more for offense than defense.

I agree, but I would argue that this is already the case.

4) There should not be too many pieces regardless of board size, or else they defend too many squares and the board gets really cluttered and difficult to effectively move on, particularly in certain sections where action is taking place. It is especially wise to avoid moves that cover too many adjacent squares so there are "holes" in a piece's coverage.

Being the kind of guy I am, I say the bigger and more numerous the better, but that's probably not the way to go. :) I think that pieces with universal coverage, like the lion, can be restricted with a short range. Right now, the lion can only move two squares at a time, which really restricts its range. If you go with dropping the pieces at their lower value, the lion and similar pieces would work better than they do now. I think that having holes in a piece's coverage is good, but I don't think it matters if there are pieces like the lion, since they are limited in other ways. But the final decision is up to you of course.

5) Promoted pieces should have stronger abilities, including improved backward movement, but should still not be too powerful; there still need to be gaps in their coverage. The only exception would be the lance or similar piece, whatever we decide on, and this is compensated for by its inability to jump at all.

As I have said, if the piece can't move very far in a single turn, then I think it's limited movement makes up for it's ability to cover the entire board.

6) Though I believe alternately promoting and demoting adds an interesting dimension for both sides when their moves are very different (as in Micro Shogi where a gold general promotes to a rook), since pieces have similar style moves in most cases on both sides, it might be best to at least try permanent promotion and the ability to drop only the weaker face up.

I'm certainly willing to give this a try. Would there be a promotion zone like there is in regular Shogi, or would pieces promote upon their first capture? If you meant the former, I suggest going with the latter instead. Most Shogi variants either have the promotion zone or alternate between promoted and unpromoted values, but I think a first capture promotion makes a lot of sense. So much of the action takes place in the middle of the board that few pieces would get promoted until being dropped and moved. I don't think the game would be as much fun if pieces didn't get promoted as often, since there aren't a lot of different pieces. In other Shogi games, pieces often promote to the value of pieces that are already on the board, so the player has most of those moves available from the start. But in variants like this, the player starts out with the weaker values and has more limited options. Increasing the likelihood of promotion is a good thing in small variants, in my opinion.

7) I therefore wish to use the following pieces with brief descriptions of their moves. All are based on pre-existing pieces following strict interpretive rules for changing them to single-dimensional moves, which you already know.

Pawn/Go Between - You already know this one
King - You know this one too
Tile General/Copper General: T-jumps to second square forward or steps one square back/C-steps one square forward or back, or jumps to second square forward
Heavenly Horse/Cavalryman: HH-jumps to third square forward or back/Cm-steps one square forward or back or jumps to third square forward or back
Goose/Phoenix: This one you know
Howling Dog/Silver Cannon: I'm still not sure about how I want to do this one. I was talking about using the reverse chariot, but I also might just want to use the howling dog instead, which moves like a lance, but also has the option to take a single step backwards
Flying Swallow/Bishop: FS-like a bishop foward, or one step backward/B-you already know

That's it for now. I may want to still use the reverse chariot instead of the howling dog, but otherwise, I think I want to try this piece combination. I'm almost tempted to end our current game and give this a chance, but I still need to work out the setup.

I think you should use the RC rather than the HD unless you think it's important to counterbalance the powerful SC.