Comments by MichaelNelson

George, 

Men and women are about than 2% genetically different--but it's a really
important 2%! Similarly, some people love apples and hate oranges and vice
versa.

I believe that you are making a real contribution to the 'Science of
Chess Variant Design' while denigrating the 'Art of Chess Variant
Design'.

I think we need both. 

Preferences and not the be all and end all of design, but neither are they
irrelevant--what is the point of designing a 'mathematically perfect' CV
that no one wants to play? And aren't clarity/depth and
drama/decisiveness important precisely because they speak to game
players' preferences?

If would-be designers had curbed their addiction to designing CV's, these
pages wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be having this (genuinely
fascinating) discussion.

I'm playtesting a revised ZRF for Fugue where I'm tweaking the piece
values in hope of getting Z to play better.

The values I'm using (normalized to Pawn=1)

Pawn   1
Swapper  3
Archer  4
Long leaper 4
Queen  5
Pushme-Pullyu 5
Immobilizer 6
Shield 6


I'm fairly certain the the ordering is at least mostly correct, but have
doubts about the magnitudes of these numbers. I've already noticed
Zillions making better use of the Swapper and trying harder to capture the
enemy Immobilzer and Shield.

Comments about these suggested piece values?

Charles,

I checked the Zillions implementation for the answers, as the page is
somewhat unclear on some of them.

(1) Yes, you can capture an uncombinable piece.

(2) Yes, the captured piece is removed form the game.

(3) You must alway capture with the compound piece, as splitting may only
be done by moving to an empty square.

Split and capture would make an interesting variant. In that variant, my
answer to (3) would be:

Yes. If for you need to vacate the starting square (for example to give
discovered check).

An elegant rule solving this problem:

If the player is in check when it is not his turn due to a rule change,
the effect of that rule change is delayed until it is his turn--the old
rules will apply to his opponent's turn.

Ryan, 

This is not the proper forum for the discussion of ozone depletion,
Walmart, Bush vs Kerry, Iraq, The Passion of the Christ, etc., etc., etc.

If you are not discussing Chess variants or very closely related topics,
please post to an appropiate forum for those topics and not here.

A most fascinating game concept. A world of interesting variants can be
developed from this idea. A large board variant with powerful but
short-range pieces comes to mind. Perhaps an 11x11 board with some empty
ships in the center.

Not quite. Chaturanga allows a pawn to promote to the piece whose starting
square it reaches--a pawn prmoting on a8 becomes a Rook, on b8 a Knight.
It doesn't matter which pawn it is, only which square it promotes on.

In Tamerlane's, the Rook's pawn always promotes to Rook no matter where
on the back rank it promotes, the Knight's pawn promotes to Knight, etc.
Here what square the pawn promotes on doesn't matter and which pawn it is
does--pretty much the exact opposite of Chaturanga.

I like this game concept. I thinks that the two Kings will be playable and
it isn't necesary to change the win conditon--a player threatend with the
capture of one of his Kings has a move option not present in FIDE
Chess--the counter-check. You check one of my Kings and I defend by
checking back. You capture my King I capture yours. 

I would suggest a small rules change--whenever a player captures an enemy
King, he must drop it on his next turn. This keeps all four kings in paly
and allows the player with a single King some nice chances of
equalizing--he has three royal targets vs. his opponents one.

I echo the previous comment about the game itself.

As for the image, I deem it to be soft porn. I say this as someone who
occasionaly chooses to view 'adult' images--but I don't want my kids to
do so while looking for CV's. Please remove the link.

The only advantage in sticking to orthochess rules as much as possible is
to simplfy describing/learning the game. But this doesn't really apply to
complications such as e.p and castling.

It is reasonable to use e.p. if the Pawn has a double step--but it isn't
a given that the Pawn should have a double step. (It works badly on a 7x7
board, for example). 

E.P. isn't the only reasonable alternative, either. I rather like the
Nova Chess rule that prohibits a pawn from moving thru a square where it
could have been captured by another pawn if it had stopped there--this
works especially well when there are several pawn type pieces in the
game.

Similarly, if you have castling, it is good if it is similar to
orthochess, but whether to have castling is a design decision based on the
overall character of the pieces and the game. 

But again, ortho castling isn't best for every game--free castling suits
some games better.

Ralph Betza's work suggests doing mobility conditions based on about 60%
of initial piece density. This is 30% for FIDE Chess and 26.4% for Unicorn
Chess. 

If Ralph is correct and this is the best value for overall mobility
ratings, the Unicorn is measurablly stronger than the Queen with respect
to mobility, as break even occurs at 22% piece density.

One overlooked Queen advantage that tends to even out the non-mobility
evaluation factors:  The Queen has the King Interdiction ability and the
Unicorn lacks it. King Interdiction refers to the ability of a Rook (or
any piece having a Rook's move) to confine the enemy King to a certain
section of the board by attacking the entire length of a rank or file so
that the King cannot cross it.

Carlos, 

Yes and No.

FIDE Chess rules apply to Pocket Mutation Chessexcept where otherwise
stated.

Under current FIDE rules, perpetual check is not a draw in and of itself
(it once was), but if you are able to give perpetual check, you can always
force triple repetition or the 50-move rule, both of which are draws. 

Note that Pocket Mutation's 50-move rule is different from FIDE:
promotions and captures reset the move count, but Pawn moves do not.