Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I was running out of ideas for how to speed up such large games. And for the variants I had in mind (14x14 and 16x16) the ideas I already discussed seemed sufficient for making those playable. A fundamental issue is that it takes at least as many moves as you have pieces to move all your pieces.

I've always liked the concept of the transport pieces in Jetan Jeddara as a way to speed up large games.

@Daniel: It seems to me that moving pieces like groups would give the game a very unchesslike feel. I suppose there could be other forms of 'air lifting', though, dependent on the presence of a transport piece, rather than its motion. E.g. highly mobile 'Aircraft Carrier' pieces could activate pure leapers other than King that stand next to it to emerge from an Aircraft Carrier elsewhere with a non-capturing move. Or perhaps be dropped on any empty square adjacent to the other Aircraft carrier. Or all leapers could be allowed to make a K step onto a friendly Carrier, to step off another Carrier in the same direction.

@Joe: 'piggybacking' a piece move on a pawn move would only lead to more participation of pieces when there are pieces that would otherwise not be worth moving. (Asuming the pawn moves were necessary anyway.) This seems to be a consequence of poor design in the first place. And a simpler rule would be to make all such 'non-worthwile moves' non-turn-ending.

The pawn double push seems to be a precedent for accelerating play with slow pieces. So I guess it would be natural to also grant multiple non-capture moves (in the same direction?) to other leapers, as long as they stay on their own half. And allow their e.p. capture on the squares they passed through.

I am still contemplating this idea of using non-capture rider moves to accelerate bringing the short-range leapers to the battle. I would not like those to have that move available permanently, though; that really would make them into different pieces. Using them as an initial move only also is unsatisfactory; for pieces that start in the back you would then have to create an open path to for allowing them to use the move, which is a bit cumbersome. And for pieces that start immediately behind the Pawns the move comes too early; you want to move the pieces there out of the way quickly, to create create exit paths for pieces in the rear of the setup, but you won't want them to land close to the enemy camp as long as they cannot join other pieces engaged in an attack there.

Perhaps the concept of a 'one-time move' as an alternative for an initial move would be useful here. A piece would be allowed to make such a move only once, but not necessarily the first time that it moves. That would give you the opportunity to first develop the normal way, having the short-range leapers jump out over the Pawns, or first push some Pawns to have them land behind it, creating exits for the pieces on the rear ranks to move out. And once you have 'unpacked' your army, and are ready to launch your attack, you can then quickly transport the short-range leapers to it by the one-time ride.

The one-time rides could be chosen in accordance with the normal move of the piece; i.e. WD would get an mR, FA an mB and N an mNN. There probably should be a visible clue for whether a piece has already used up its one-time move. (E.g. as in Capped Pawns.) I would still like to discourage players from saving this move for tactical benifit late in the game, rather than just transport to the action. Perhaps this can be sufficiently discouraged by only granting forward one-time moves. Then the move would get less useful when the piece already has advanced a lot.

Perhaps all short-range leapers should get a one-time fhmNN move? With four different forward directions the move can always get you very close to where you want to be. You could of course also adapt the rule that a piece loses the move as soon as it enters the enemy half of the board, as well as when it uses it.

Another way you could do it is with mandatory demotion upon capturing, or on entering some region of the board.

@HG.

What is fhmNN? If I had understood correctly is the four foreword most directions of the nightrider.

I don't see a problem with saving the move for endgame. This is another strategical choice which can make the game better. I 'm thinking that even allowing a 2 times move should be fine. But yes, not too much.

Indeed, the most-forward 4 moves of the Nightrider, as non-capture. Allowing it a single time seems cleaner that twice (0 - 1 - infinity principle).

Perhaps it is indeed no problem, as you say. It certainly would simplify the rules, which is a good thing.

For some large games, taking a while to position one's forces is a feature, not a bug. ;)

But those are just a few. For the rest, I don't think I'd turn them into slides and rides, but long moves; rather than giving a Knight fhmNN, perhaps ifhmN2 or ifhmNX.

HG,

I'm not sure if the 0-1-infinity applies here. Having two aces in the pocket could be useful. The way I see it if you give full hippogonal directions to some of the pieces at least, the second move could be useful for a mid game relocation if the region where the first special move occurred got cleaned out. 3 will overdo it, most likely. But think about a phoenix with 2 just moving nightrider powers or a Kyrin with 2 just moving camel rider powers (in order to preserve the coloubounding). They could be useless after their first crash into the enemy forces. But if there is a second relocation move they can stay relevant. I think the downside of this is that such a piece may return homw making the game two defensive.

An even crazier suggestion would be to have an overall budget of relocation moves for all short leapers. Food for thought.

Sounds like some sort of limitation like "can only use  # times," or perhaps "only when there are no enemy pieces within # spaces," could be of help, from the perspective Aurelian proposes.

The former sounds to me like a possible use for t in XBetza; for example, t2mNN would allow two non-capturing Nightrider moves per game. I don't know how I'd code the latter, but I do know that I've come across several pieces with that type of limitation (and its inverse).

Yes, your no pieces idea is nice!

Well, individual pieces that can do something only N times is currently already possible: you define different piece types for each number of attempts they have left, and let those demote to the type that has one fewer attempt. The demotion can be specified by the morph parameter, and their permanent move can be exempted from it by marking it with an apostrophe in the XBetza description. Duplicating the piece type that way is not very elegant, though.

What is a problem is a 'global' budget, shared by all pieces (of the same, or a number of types). Then, if one piece uses the move, all other pieces that are capable of using it would have to be demoted. But implementing it that way would be quite inefficient.

I suppose a generic feature that is efficient could be this: a counter for each player is added to the game state, which by default starts at 0, but can be made to start at another value by a parameter counter=N. Moves in the XBetza description could be marked (e.g. with a t modifier); such a move would then only be allowed if the counter for that player is non-zero, and when such a move is performed it decrements the counter.

Ok, but will these make a game more entertaining?

I was thinking that something like t2mNN would make the countdown thing (on a single piece) much simpler, at least from the user's end. And it wouldn't detract from any other use of t (including the two that I already suggested in the comments for the Betza page as well as the one you just mentioned), since this would only activate when followed by a number.