I find the Imperial Cutter really superior to the Federal Corvette or the Anaconda for my mining style, because the canopy is almost at the front and the cargo hatch is also quite forward and unobstructed.
Having the nose almost on the Asteroid speeds up things significantly (no laser falloff, short travel for the collectors), and I do with just two Medium Lasers, 8 collectors and 4 prospectors.
It is important that the latter are on a single, as large as possible Prospector Limpet Controller (probably Class 5).
Expiring Prospectors do not alternate between controllers, and Prospector numbers scale better with class than Collector numbers.
I find this leaves some room for both defense and offence.
Prospecting quickly and getting aligned with the turning axis of fast spinning, irregular or large asteroids quickly help increase overall efficiency.
The Cutter is also quite fast with the cargo hatch still open.
The Shields help in Resource Extraction Sites, and to me the large cargo capacity and a reasonable jump range matter as well. Well, they did more before I got a Fleet Carrier.
With a Federal Corvette you waste more firepower unless you turn on the enemies, which of course you can do faster than with an Imperial Cutter or an Anaconda.
Whatever you use, remember that a single medium Mining Laser mines faster than two small ones combined.
Nobody argues here about the Cutter superiority as a soft miner - the nick of "queen of mining" is worth. Sure the Cutter is "superior" at mining in "soft" ( no constant waves of Pirates each 3-5 minutes, with a significant percentage of Big boys and Elite between them) .
But when confronted with fighting AND efficient mining, the Cutter is THE worst of the 3 big.
Here we talk about mining in ResH, where you may have waves of 1-3-6 pirates swarming you each 5 minutes.
And the Cutter - in this especial conditions - simply cannot hold his own very well, compared with the Annie and the Vette - you have no space to maneuver, the boost ( main "weapon" of the Cutter) is useless, and the fact the Cutter have, by far, the worst agility of all 3 , combined with crappy hard points position, make the Cutter the lesser ship on this situation.
You cannot achieve a good balance between firepower, tanking, mining and decent cargo space ( over 256 tones) in the Cutter. Simply as that.
In a scale from 1 to 10, I consider the Vette at top, with 10, the Annie next with 9, and the Cutter with 7, followed by T10 with 5.
Again, we talk about mining in combat conditions, alone ( not in a wing) in Hazardous ReS