I'd like to understand how the AI behaves when it's not being directed influenced by you the player.

Example:

I haven't really started the plot yet, and I haven't created any self sustaining trade nor created any stations. I've just been flying around exploring and fighting. I've captured some ships which I am stockpiling because... just because. I'm just a guy in an M3 fighter goofing around.

I keep the majority of ships I have captured in the Military Outpost in Elena's Fortune. Since this sector is of interest to me, I have placed two AdSats insystem so I can see what's going on no matter where I am.

And this is where I noticed something silly. The AI loves to invade Elena's Fortune with a Pirate M2 or a M1 (sometimes one, and then soon the other) with fighter escort (always Blastclaws + random M4s and 5s).

When I watch from out of system, if there is any Commonwealth race military presence (almost always Argon, because of location) they will just... ignore the Pirates. Typically, I will see the fighters get wiped out, but larger ships will just be ignored.

If there is no Commonwealth military present at the time, they seem to be in no hurry to get there, and when they eventually do, the above happens; Pirate fighters get wiped out quick but the large ships are flat out ignored.

Now, if I am personally in system, pretty much the same thing happens, except I can bait the large ships in to getting close enough to military ships to cause an engagement.

HOWEVER being in system ALSO means the large Pirate ships will destroy the Free Argon Trading Port (it seems when I am OOS, the AI can't destroy infrastructure, just other ships...? because this has only happened with me in system; I can SETA for a long time OOS watching via AdSats and it never gets destroyed...?) if left free reign to do so (which they often are!).

I am in no position to do anything about it myself. I do not have the right ships to tackle M1s and 2s, nor really the funds to quickly do so right now. Why does the AI seemingly not care? Is there no internal coding to Commonwealth AI to prioritize their systems?

And why does it matter where I am?

Looks like you've been playing quite a bit so this might have already been answered somewhere else.

Yeah this is a common thing. The usual scenario is for a Xenon Q to enter a border sector and it just goes to town. I'm fairly certain the AI can destroy the port in sector but the thing is OOS works different - everything has to be point blank on the map, and in sector the ships turrets (which is where the big guns are on the big ships) are just going to casually fire on whatever they can.

But yeah there is no overall race directive in X3 AFAIK. Eventually a military patrol goes by and it's killed. That's it. X3AP adds rapid response fleets which is good I guess but they act more as the fun police for the player.

Why does it matter where you are? :) Oh man that could take pages to answer. The short answer is out of sector calculations are broken to an extreme level and easily abusable. Off the top of my head: Terran ships are by far the worst OOS even though they are supposed to be the best because their main guns do trash shield damage. Those annoying plasma throwers on pirate ships that have tiny range are actually absurdly OP in OOS. I remember there being some sort of exploit with ammo usage as well but I don't remember the details...

I enjoyed X3 quite a bit when I played... But I don't think I will ever go back now that X4 actually runs okay.