Borg Tactical Probes are hostile ships that start showing up in Borg systems around Alta, and they're worth hunting specifically because they're the source of Inert Nanoprobes -- the resource that gates both upgrading the Vi'dar ship and promoting Borg Officers. The Vi'dar itself is the right tool for this job: it carries bonus damage against Borg targets, so farming Tactical Probes with anything else is slower than it needs to be. Once you've got Inert Nanoprobes, the Refinery converts them into two more specific currencies -- Active Nanoprobes for promoting Borg Officers, and Charged Nanoprobes for upgrading the Vi'dar or spending in the Borg Event Store -- so this is really an early-to-mid-game farming loop with the Vi'dar at its center.
Metra Alpha, Beta, and Gamma -- the deeper Borg systems -- aren't reachable by normal warp; each trip costs one Transwarp Cell, consumed the instant the warp starts, even if you cancel it partway through. You can only get Transwarp Cells after building the Vi'dar (which itself needs Shipyard 25), after which a Transwarp Cell chest becomes claimable from Gifts every 22 hours. Storage caps at 8 or 9 cells at a time, so a full inventory means using some before you can claim more, though they occasionally also turn up in events or store offers outside the regular gift cadence. The Vi'dar gate here isn't arbitrary: it's both your ticket into Metra space and your best damage option once you're there, so there's no real path to farming Borg systems efficiently without it.
