Is it me or did you (Brett) ignore the EFC Exquisite Focus Crystal questions on purpose?
i've found a rather relaxing method to find these and also Biotechs
- Find a system with several station in it with different economies, and a rather large number of faction (mine was in Famine state, but it doesn't matter i guess)
- Do missions for the controlling faction, preferably the less time consuming ones (aka no mining). If you respected the former point there should be several mission sending you just to the neighboring stations.
- Your local rep will rise, and apparently, this makes rare materials rewards missions spawn more often even for (non controlling) factions you are still neutral with. So check out ALL missions.
Remember: it has been stated that for materials, the "geography" doesn't matter, neither do the economy. The important thing is the mission rank (Deadly / Elite)
You can also find cracked industrial firmware this way.