I was trying to make a mod using <Scope>ZOC</Scope> and was having trouble... and so I looked for examples of ZOC effects. The only place ZOC is the scope is in a few culture traits, so I checked them out and noticed that the ZOC effects from the ideology tree don't seem to be working.
To test this, I modded in an improvement that gave me oodles of ideology points per turn. I purchased the Vigilant 5 trait (+1 free carrier ) and the Awe 3 trait (-25% hit points to enemy ships)... neither seem to be working.
I did not test Vigilant 3 trait because I wasn't sure how to see if the effect worked or not...
I think this may be caused by an issue with the ZOC scope, but I'm not sure.
Another note about Awe 3: the <TargetRelation>Self</TargetRelation> should be <TargetRelation>Enemy</TargetRelation>, I think.