Relative to direction of "flow", if you have a small area on inlet and large area on outlet(stock KYB shock piston for example) some will label that a restriction. But what really needs to be determined is if that "restriction" is indeed causing problems relative to the actual speeds the shock is seeing. Some say yes simply because the 2 volumes are not equivalent. I personally do not think stock components are restrictive to the point of being labeled junk.
So, you look at stock pistons without shims stacked on them and you see no problems really. But, when you look at them with shimstacks on them you see a entirely different deal when trying to follow oil path. In the stock stuff you don't have quite the issue you would in a small port design. It is critical that those smaller ports do not face any directional flow restriction issues. On that "feed" end of the port there would be no such thing as excess. A hole can only take so much velocity before it will begin to restrict itself. If small enough it CAN lock up. It is all relevent to application requirements.
So, my opinion is that your improvements are well worth whatever extra cost is involved. If you have no directional restriction, and ports are sized to requirements, then you have much improved your product. I thought before that the previous version was a good performer and I think now with these changes it is about as good as you can make it. Simply put, of what I know is available out there currently this is what I want in my shock.
Last year, I intentionally set up stock shock piston to provide even more restriction than how they come. Guess what? It was one of the best shocks I've ever ridden. How did I do it? I restricted the "feed" even more by using larger face shims than stock. Where stock compression face shim size was 40mm I tried a 42mm. This restricted flow to the rebound ports. And vice versa. So, that tells me that for what the shock is asked to meet the stock pistons are not restrictive at all as they come. It was pretty cool and kinda blew my mind. I was expecting some problems, and although we did have a small problem in chatter, the rest of the shock was so good it overshadowed that problem.
I strongly feel that this one area is very important part of your design. Of course there is more, but for now....
And yeah wiseguy, it's YOURS.