i feel like claiming sectors is kind of dumb

[Sericro]

Sector ownership does have a use if you are at war with a faction. So long as you fight them in your sector or in their sector, you won't lose faction the other factions that you want to trade with. You'll lose temporary faction with individual ships that fly by, but it won't permanently affect you unless they join in.

You'll also want to make sure your miners and traders turrets refrain from attacking your enemies outside of your sector.

[Hector0x]

Oh boy, we've arrived at "Just make it optional"

usually i would agree. Optional game modes only waste dev time & resources. Have one vision and focus on it.

But paradoxically Egosoft has already created a huge amount of very detailed AI code which is just overkill and would only be needed in a more dynamic sandbox.
Examples:
1) pirates are actually getting hired by factions. The strategic AI wants them to go raid some specific enemy faction and steal specific resources and then come back to sell these in a specific area to help fix specific resource shortages. That's already pretty advanced asymetric warfare behavior, suited for minor powers to bolster their own economy while hurting the big boys and also maintaining plausible denyability. This feature helps weaker factions to maintain the power balance. But right now this equilibrium is already secured by other means. You wouldn't really notice if pirates would just magically spawn in and start destroying random freighters without actually stealing the cargo to feed it back into the economy. So why not go this much easier route and get a similar outcome? Why develop advanced AI if it doesn't matter?
2) the AI has to do actual recon work and send scouts to be able to know the power and location of enemy military assets in a sector. It selects invasion forces based on its knowledge about the enemy. Why do you need advanced code like this if wars are not supposed to progress and must always remain limited border skirmishes where nothing can really happen until the player completes some storyline? And even after completing the storyline this only shifts the border a bit more until it hits a new limit which is trying to keep the loosing faction alive. So if real wars are not allowed to happen, why not just give the AI complete intel about enemy assets? Because even if one AI has better intel than the other it is not allowed to leverage it properly. It would be easier to just send random scout ships around the galaxy. This would also look like they are actually doing something.


There is a lot of potential but it gets held back too much. The primary design philosophy seems to be that everything must be compatible with the story plots. Which is fine, but after wrapping up X4's story DLCs Egosoft should really consider a standalone title like Albion Prelude. X3AP was much less story focussed than Terran Conflict. The main theme was the Argon/Terran war, but back then it had to be heavily scripted. Today the simulation ingredients are already on the table. The dev cost for a more dynamic version of X4 seems negligible.

Back to topic:
To me the actual point of sector ownership should be that factions would not allow you to build every type of station and also not allow unlimited resource mining. After you already produce 3 different high end ship parts in their teritory and you ask for, lets say another permit to build a Claytronics facbrication, then they would just give you the finger and say no. If they really have the sector authority, why on earth should they allow you to become a self sufficient threat to their power? At this point you would have the choice to diversify and go to a different faction, or build without permit and try to defend your stations, or conquer your own sector. But owning a sector should make you a valid target for turf war.

[JackXx]

I know this hast been asked alot already but i m still puzzeld. Are there any actual benefits of owning a sector except for the illegel polizing? I read that u could Capture and attack ships without losing rep but ive tryd with a terran ship but i emidiatly lost rep but they do have a station in my sector, Getsu Fune, it is owned by me and is not contested, please mind my bad english

[jlehtone]

You don't have to pay license for station plots.

I read that u could Capture and attack ships without losing rep but ive tryd with a terran ship but i emidiatly lost rep

When you do kill, you definitely do lose reputation with the owner of the destroyed asset no matter where you do it.
You kill Terran, Terran mad.

Additionally, the owner of the sector can react, depending on the relation of the sector owner and the victim.
We kill criminal tour busses next to station because we want reputation (criminal is enemy of owner of sector).
We lose reputation is we kill "allies" of the sector.
In our sector we don't care whom we kill (but the dead still diss us).

[Raptor34]

You don't have to pay license for station plots.

I read that u could Capture and attack ships without losing rep but ive tryd with a terran ship but i emidiatly lost rep

When you do kill, you definitely do lose reputation with the owner of the destroyed asset no matter where you do it.
You kill Terran, Terran mad.

Additionally, the owner of the sector can react, depending on the relation of the sector owner and the victim.
We kill criminal tour busses next to station because we want reputation (criminal is enemy of owner of sector).
We lose reputation is we kill "allies" of the sector.
In our sector we don't care whom we kill (but the dead still diss us).

Thinking about it though, wouldn't rep loss be limited if we engage them out of their sector? Because any engagement wouldn't cascade out of control.
Also I notice that apparently my allies like to come patrol my sector so that's a way to acquire paintjobs.