H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Feb 5, 2021 10:51 AM UTC:
For most fairy pieces Betza notation is very compact, and would consists only of 2 or 3 capitals. Like BN and BR for Archbishop and Chancellor, HFD for the 'Half Duck', FC for the Omega Wizard. It gets a bit complex only for asymmetric pieces, where you would have to detail all the directions it moves in. And for divergent pieces, where you have to specify captures and non-captures separately (fmWfcF for a Shatranj Pawn, which is divergent as well as asymmetric).
With the XBetza extension it can get really complicated to specify moves that consists of multiple 'legs', i.e. visit intermediate squares on the way to their final destination to do 'something' there. (Which could be as innocent as just changing direction, or it could be testing whether the intermediate square is empty (lame leapers) or occupied (hoppers), or even capture what is there (locusts).) In that case you would have to specify the entire path to the destination by a sequence of (relative) direction specifications. Which will get longer as the paths visit more squares, and as their are more alternative paths. The Falcon of Falcon Chess is a notorious example of that: it has 16 move targets, each reachable through 3 different path, each path consisting of 3 steps. (Fortunately it is fully symmetric, which makes the 16 targets equivalent, but that still leaves 3 paths of 3 steps to be described.) Such pieces are really exceptional, though.
For most fairy pieces Betza notation is very compact, and would consists only of 2 or 3 capitals. Like BN and BR for Archbishop and Chancellor, HFD for the 'Half Duck', FC for the Omega Wizard. It gets a bit complex only for asymmetric pieces, where you would have to detail all the directions it moves in. And for divergent pieces, where you have to specify captures and non-captures separately (fmWfcF for a Shatranj Pawn, which is divergent as well as asymmetric).
With the XBetza extension it can get really complicated to specify moves that consists of multiple 'legs', i.e. visit intermediate squares on the way to their final destination to do 'something' there. (Which could be as innocent as just changing direction, or it could be testing whether the intermediate square is empty (lame leapers) or occupied (hoppers), or even capture what is there (locusts).) In that case you would have to specify the entire path to the destination by a sequence of (relative) direction specifications. Which will get longer as the paths visit more squares, and as their are more alternative paths. The Falcon of Falcon Chess is a notorious example of that: it has 16 move targets, each reachable through 3 different path, each path consisting of 3 steps. (Fortunately it is fully symmetric, which makes the 16 targets equivalent, but that still leaves 3 paths of 3 steps to be described.) Such pieces are really exceptional, though.