Well, I don't know what is the purpose of displaying the captured pieces; as I said, displaying them has no effect on processing of the game by Game Courier, and in most variants it is mostly redundant information, as what was captured can be deduced from what is still left on the board. So one suspects that it is merely a visual aid to the players and observers to easily see the material balance.
The way GC calculates it (difference between current and initial board population) does not make it perfectly suited for that purpose, though, since pieces can disappear from the board in other ways than capture. In particular, after a promotion it would count the Pawn as 'captured', even if no Pawn was captured at all, and it would no longer show the resulting Queen as captured, even if a Queen had been captured. And it has no provision for indicating a negative difference if the original Queen was still around.
In a game like Conquer a negative material balance will occur quite often. If a visual aid for judging that balance should probably show the difference between the white and black population of the current position, presenting negatives as pieces of the opposit color. According to Fergus it should be possible to overrule the default presentation with GAME code, but I would not know how, and I don't think it would be worth it anyway.
Well, I don't know what is the purpose of displaying the captured pieces; as I said, displaying them has no effect on processing of the game by Game Courier, and in most variants it is mostly redundant information, as what was captured can be deduced from what is still left on the board. So one suspects that it is merely a visual aid to the players and observers to easily see the material balance.
The way GC calculates it (difference between current and initial board population) does not make it perfectly suited for that purpose, though, since pieces can disappear from the board in other ways than capture. In particular, after a promotion it would count the Pawn as 'captured', even if no Pawn was captured at all, and it would no longer show the resulting Queen as captured, even if a Queen had been captured. And it has no provision for indicating a negative difference if the original Queen was still around.
In a game like Conquer a negative material balance will occur quite often. If a visual aid for judging that balance should probably show the difference between the white and black population of the current position, presenting negatives as pieces of the opposit color. According to Fergus it should be possible to overrule the default presentation with GAME code, but I would not know how, and I don't think it would be worth it anyway.