Farm 1) Robigo Mines – THE MOST SINGLE IMPORTANT LOCATION IN THE GAME (for many reasons)
Collect top tier engineering mats as rewards for sirus atmospheric tourist runs. Grab as many missions from the imperial faction as possible, which will eventually unlock cutter. Drive that bus until your eyes bleed. 'Just .. one .. more .. trip…ugh…my eyes, they bleed!'
Farm 2) Thargoid barnacle site (google for site)
Collect meta alloys (to sell for $) and raw material mats. Limpets are exponentially more efficient method of gathering than SRV at these sites. Interceptor cut scene does not trigger unless you're in SRV. Log out to main and back to repeat.
Farm 3) Stack combat missions for Federal factions (google for site)
Bring limpets to collect manufactured mats from destroyed enemies. Completing the missions will eventually unlock the Vet. Scanning enemies during combat will provide encoded mats, and limpets will automatically collect manufactured mats from any destroyed ships near them.
The activities described above in those areas will allow you to concurrently completed multiple grinds at once, such as Vet grind, Cutter grind, combat grind, explorer grind (tourist beacon runs count towards exploration), triple elite grind, engineering material grind, reload/repair/refuel mat grind, money grind, etc.
Also, for huge leaps forward in progression try one of these unique game loops:
1) Trip to Jamison crash site (encoded farm). Logout to main and back to repeat. Warning: space madness can easily be found there.
2) Trip to the shard sites (top tier raw mat farms, will have everything except selenium – which you will be collecting from the barnacle sites in large amounts anyway). Not a fun trip, kinda far out there there are 2 systems not too far from each other each with multiple planets to land on, each having ample stocks of a single top tier raw mat, like yttrium. Dislodging and collecting those shards can be … creatively adventurous … so not many players visit those systems habitually.
3) Drop on any HGE signal that you come across when entering new system or starting the game until you know that you do not want what it has to offer (experience will eventually teach you how to tell which specific top tier manufactured mat is most likely going to be in that location). If yo udo not pick these up 'casually' while your locomoting around the galaxy, then you're going to have to hunt them specifically, and that is NOT what I would call quality entertainment. Sometimes they just don't show up (cries). So grab what's next to you today and tomorrow you won't have to hunt down specific system conditions to get that opportunity again. Logout ALL THE WAY OUT OF THE GAME and then back in to repeat – until signal timer runs out. Sometimes, some of these signal timers are not used during community goals. Read that again, because it's a cheat code lol.
