H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 31, 2020 06:14 PM UTC:
Ummm... That could indeed be seen as some sort of induced move. One difference with the previous cases is that it induced by a foe rather than a friend. So far the 'x' modifier was only assumed to work on friends. I guess 'x' could be defined as a 'combining modifier', so that xc doesn't mean you can capture or induce, but means you can only induce foes. (And then xd for friends.) This is not unprecedented in Betza notation; e.g. in frF the f and r also combine, to indicate the intermediate direction.
But a reciprocal capturer is pretty awful to describe. You would either need to make every other piece a selective inducer acting only on the Mimotaur, or treat the latter as a move borrower. Which would have to make it borrow through a host of different moves, each type-specific, and furthermore raise the problem that it should only borrow the move in that direction. An alternative is to equip the Mimotaur with a host of different type-specific captures. If you would need type-specifity anyway, that would be a lot simpler than treating it as induction. But imagine how long the move description would get if you would add a Mimotaur to Tai Shogi...
None of these solutions seems very appealing. Yet the idea of reciprocal capture is not so outlandish; the Ultima Chameleon has it too. (Of course in that game it must then capture in all kinds of weird ways, rather than through all kinds of moves.) I would be inclined to solve it in a completely different way. XBetza notation has used up almost the entire lower-case alphabet, but capitals are still plentiful. So it seems a workable idea to define a new atom (say M for Mirror) that does not have a fixed move, but borrows the move from another involved piece. So cM would mean reciprocal capture.
Ummm... That could indeed be seen as some sort of induced move. One difference with the previous cases is that it induced by a foe rather than a friend. So far the 'x' modifier was only assumed to work on friends. I guess 'x' could be defined as a 'combining modifier', so that xc doesn't mean you can capture or induce, but means you can only induce foes. (And then xd for friends.) This is not unprecedented in Betza notation; e.g. in frF the f and r also combine, to indicate the intermediate direction.
But a reciprocal capturer is pretty awful to describe. You would either need to make every other piece a selective inducer acting only on the Mimotaur, or treat the latter as a move borrower. Which would have to make it borrow through a host of different moves, each type-specific, and furthermore raise the problem that it should only borrow the move in that direction. An alternative is to equip the Mimotaur with a host of different type-specific captures. If you would need type-specifity anyway, that would be a lot simpler than treating it as induction. But imagine how long the move description would get if you would add a Mimotaur to Tai Shogi...
None of these solutions seems very appealing. Yet the idea of reciprocal capture is not so outlandish; the Ultima Chameleon has it too. (Of course in that game it must then capture in all kinds of weird ways, rather than through all kinds of moves.) I would be inclined to solve it in a completely different way. XBetza notation has used up almost the entire lower-case alphabet, but capitals are still plentiful. So it seems a workable idea to define a new atom (say M for Mirror) that does not have a fixed move, but borrows the move from another involved piece. So cM would mean reciprocal capture.