Based on personal Anaconda Mining experiences :
Running 2x Class2 Mining Lasers and 2x Class1 Mining Lasers seems to be the optimal Mining speed (A-Grade Power Distributor), as on 4 Pips WPN this depletes the Asteroid about the same time the Capacitor normally starts drying up.
(plus I never liked holding the Trigger for an extremely long time
)
The free time gained from quicker depletion of the Asteroid and while the Collectors run to collect can be used to fire new Prospectors and locate the next suitable Mining Target in the meantime.
That also helped in case you get "Cargo hold at maximum capacity" while still Collecting, as every Prospector fired off frees another ton of space.
Moving the Anaconda's (or any Ship's) Cargo Hatch approx. ~30m directly above the fragment Cloud enables "Turbo-Collecting" and
massively speeds Collector Drones up if done right and the Asteroid/Fragment cloud permits for it.
Then, even a mere 2-3 Collectors scoop faster than 8 Collectors having to travel 400m and take their usual rectangular routing. Fragment-to-Fragment time for a single Collector can be as low as ~1 Second under optimal conditions.
On the Capacity limit, the Shield Generator Class makes the biggest difference... that's personal preference of course.
On the rest, I always liked 2 separate Prospectors (fired alternating) while moving forward, and 6 Collectors (2x 5A Collector Internals).
That worked best for me when prospecting for specific ores (i.e. Palladium/Platinum/Painite).
