I think a better way to do it would be increasing rewards for each set completed. So the rewards could be like 10,000 for the first set completed, 20,000 for the next, then 40,000, then 80,000, etc (with the actual values being tweaked to give a fair effort to reward ratio) regardless of what order they are explored in.
You realize how stupid that makes you sound, right? "Players making that much dilithium by running STFs were gaining a huge advantage over the players that were not." "Hey, there's a fast way to make in EC. I don't want to do it. WAAAAAH THOSE OTHER PLAYERS HAVE MORE EC THAN ME!!!" You don't typically see players…