Botany Bay? Botany Bay. Oh no! It’s a Data Extraction Event.

I know you’re excited about another data extraction event. I mean, who wouldn’t be excited about mining data 3,700 units at a time.

This is a pretty good depiction of my reaction.

Tips for completing the Data Extraction Event as Painlessly As Possible

While your goals and rewards will vary by level, what you’ll be doing should be pretty consistent. Here’s my solo event page at level 36. My goal of 725,000 means that I’ll had to fill my fully tiered Botany Bay one and a half times, and hop on and off of nodes just 196 times. If you’ve got a Botany Bay you can upgrade, that’ll give you a bunch of points and save you a lot of time.

Here are the rewards.

For completing the individual event, you’ll get some of the Zeta tokens for recruiting augment officers in this event. You’ll also get augment credits and some augment points. But the major selling point is the independent credits, that you can use to upgrade your augment and borg officers down the line.

The alliance event gives more Zeta tokens, uncommon refined ore, and alliance credits. The leaderboard event gives augment credits, rare refined gas, uncommon refined gas, some dilithium, and if you finish in the top three, a Pan avatar.

Crewing your Botany Bay

The major change to data mining, with the rapid increase in mining speed, added to the massive reduction in node sizes will affect your crew selection. Previously, I’d have wanted T’Pring on board to max my protected cargo, but in this event, protected cargo really doesn’t matter. My server has a standing agreement that we aren’t hitting Botany Bays during this event. It doesn’t help you with the event and makes an already tedious event worse.

So the ideal crew for this event is Joaquin as captain and Ten of Ten and Stonn as the crew. Joaquin and Ten will greatly increase your mining speed, and Stonn will give you a huge boost in your cargo capacity. This will mean you’ll be able to mine a lot longer without having to return to your base to unload. Stonn for my Botany Bay makes a difference of 136k in total cargo (526k with vs. 390k without.)

Kill The Hunters (Or at least Distract them…)

No matter what your reputation with the Augments is, they don’t want you in their territory. So you’re going to have to deal with bounty hunters. Send a warship along that arrives just before your Botany Bay to distract the hunter, and you’ll be able to mine in peace.

And lastly…

But there’s a catch. The nodes in Augment space have developed a bug.

No, it’s not the cloud minders, but rather it’s…

…

…

Ghost miners in Yarda!

You’ll be mining for a while, and when you go to reset your node, it will say that your ship is still on the node. In order to fix this problem, you’ll need someone who’s not in your alliance to “attack” your ghost miner to clear up the node. Don’t worry, your ship won’t be damaged.

Likewise, when someone else “breaks” one of these nodes, it will look like this.

You can hit other people’s “ghost miners” with no damage to your ship. If you’ve got a shield up, it will give you a warning that attacking will lower your shield. Ignore this warning. It won’t affect your shield at all.

So good luck out there. I hope this helps.

And one more thing. If someone tried s to put a Ceti Eel in your comically fake-looking prop ear, you tell’em “no!”

Live long and prosper my friends.