Well, while the server is down, I'll write up a draft of the improved walkthrough for farming Strange Alien Artifacts for EC that will hopefully go on our future fleet page.
Farming Strange/Powered Alien Artifacts
This guide presumes that you already have access to and a working knowledge of the duty officer (DOFF) system.
Strange Alien Artifacts (SAA) and their crafted end-product, Powered Alien Artifacts (PAA) are items that can be sold for a reasonable amount of energy credits (EC). Obtaining them requires an investment of only a few minutes per character, but as of the writing of this walkthrough, a PAA can sell for nearly 1.4 million EC. In order to start farming these items, you must first complete the assignment
Negotiate Delivery of Rare Commodities (1/1) This assignment can be located in the highlighted sector blocks and clusters:
(image from STOWiki)
You can fly around the 6 areas to try to locate the assignment, or you can use the website
http://bit.ly/DOFFS. As this is a separate and unique assignment from the eventual repeatable, it does not have a cooldown. You will need
3 Jevonite and
3 Shapeshifting Lockets. The DOFF requirements are two of any officer. Traders help with success, but even a failure will still obtain a SAA. There is no casualty risk.
This will get you your first SAA, which still sells for a respectable amount, but can be made more profitable by converting it to a PAA. In order to do this, you must go to the interior of your ship and to the science officer to first complete the
Decipher Strange Markings on Alien Artifact. This assignment requires a Research Lab Scientist. You only need to complete this assignment once, which will unlock
Infuse Alien Artifact with Rare Particles.
For the
Infuse assignment, you will need one of each rare particle trace (Antithoron, Anyon, Duderon, etc.) and two DOFFs, one of which must be a Development Lab Scientist. This assignment will still produce a PAA even with a failure, but there is a failure risk, so it is best to use uncommon or better DOFFs.
In order to continue to farming more artifacts, you will then need to do the assignment
Negotiate Additional Delivery of Rare Commodities (NADORC). NADORC has the same possible locations as its predecessor. You can also check
http://bit.ly/DOFFS for availability. The DOFFJOBS channel is also helpful, as someone will usually check for NADORC upon each assignment reset eventually. When the assignment appears, it will be in the same place for everyone. It has a cooldown of 76 hours from the time you previously started it, so even if it is up, it will not appear for you if you started another instance of it less than 76 hours previously.
If you have many alts, it is beneficial to try to get them all to the assignment within a short time so you can more easily keep track of when your cooldown will end.