I must admit I haven't done much mining at all in this version of the game.
Think i tried it once in FE2, for all of 5 mins... not my cuppa either. Never tried it in ED, doubt i ever will.
It didn't seem so bad in Beeb Elite iirc, tho again i never spent any time at it. Only exception was rock hermits - occasionally on approach to a planet you'd encounter a larger asteroid, that was actually inhabited - if you shot at it the hapless miner would launch out in a small fighter (Kraits, Mambas and Sidewinders IIRC) to defend their claim. But if you took them out and continued blasting their rock-hovel, it would shatter, and and you could collect some of the fragments to sell as minerals. If the hermit had an escape capsule then you also had the chance to bag yourself a slave. So, not so much 'mining' as cold-blooded piracy and murder, really. In those circumstances tho, you were sucked in by the pace of the game, there was little let up in the action and you could be fighting off a whole pirate clan seconds later (or often, at the same time as the rock hermit). Halcyon days..
Planted a few MB4's in the FE2 endgame when you're made, and out drifting the fringes in a Puma clipper or whatever. Just for something new to try. Come back months later and see what pittance they've collected, not that you needed the cash at that stage..
Best thing about the whole mining gig IMHO was the small, cheap, once-shot-kill laser for those lean builds or when you needed to max fuel or cabins etc..
Having said all that, i can imagine that shooting rocks with a laser and hoovering up the shrapnel is probably edge-of-seat stuff by ED's standards. Presumably the fragments all come with the obligatory "flight-assist" to prevent them outrunning your ship's speed limit (because how lame would
that be, trying to chase a lump of rock that's moving at 150 m/s when your 'top speed' is 140 m/s?).. But i guess it's something else to
do, in the absence of being allowed to accelerate or thus do anything at all exciting or fun in your own so-called 'spaceship'..