I've been reading about the HGE's being hard to find. I've been finding them in some ways easier than before in shipping lanes. But, after going a quest to find HGE's I can definitely say that "some" is the keyword.
I haven't looked for Pharmaceutical Isolators per say, but I've looked for other things just like it. Pharmaceutical Isolators seemed to be harder to find in 2.4 and haven't gotten any easier in 3.0. The way I used to find HGE's was to fly above the system plane in deep space in a system with the correct state and a high population.
HGE's just seem to be so random now. I flew in three high pop independent systems in a state of war and until I got to the last system I never saw a single HGE. After spending 45 minutes in each system, I dropped into the last one, pointed the nose straight up, away from the star and plane of the system, and I found one with in a 100 ls of the star. 5 military super capacitors later i went into supercruise and 300 ls later HGE #2 with 4 military super capacitors. Super cruised again and quickly found a third with military alloys... Then nothing for 45 minutes.
So I jumped out and jumped back in, found 2 in quick succession, 1 with super capacitors and one military alloys. Then nothing for 25 minutes so I jumped out and back in, again nothing so I called it a day. Woke up today, the system wasn't in a state of war but I cruised around to see if any HGE's would show, nothing. Jumped out and back, nothing. Went to 2 other independent and 1 fed system in a state of war with high populations. Nothing in over 2 hours of flying around. Flew back to my current home base and immediately an HGE popped up with 3 imperial shielding in it.
Before 2.4 you could find HGE's to and average or 3-4 an hour in high pop systems, some days as much as 5 -6. Not anymore. It's almost a ridiculous waste of my time to even search for these anymore. And the sideways trade with the mat traders is just wrong. Grade 5 mats are hard to find, I get that. So why is it better to trade up one grade of a lesser material than it is to trade sideways for a similar grade of material?
I don't know, I'm getting pretty fed up with the game again. The fact that I can't take my DD5 legacy drive to Felicity or Elvira and get them to convert it or even add a special effect to a high level non legacy drive is bunk. I basically have to take the drive/ship out to Palin to convert it, which is a major PIA in a combat ship, I got 3 jumps into a brown dwarf field with my FAS (I only had 1316 more jumps to go) and said the heck with it. Or (as I've done) I took one ship out to Palin, re-did the drives, and pinned his recipe so that I can take my other ships to Felicity, remove the mods, and apply at least a level one mod with special effect so I can remote engineer it fully. Not a huge thing, but just more time wasting when I'd rather be playing.