The limpets are not very intelligent. They want to go in a straight line to the fragments, so you have to position your ship so that they can always do it. If laser mining, keep your nose as xlose to the rock as possible and make sure you have at least 3 collector limpets for each class 2 laser otherwise the limpets will have time to spread out, which substantially reduces your mining efficiency. If core mining, try to keep your ship lined up with the plane that the rocks split apart.
Nah, dude, the OP is right, after Odyssey release trainwreck , mining become bugged as hell - the limpets' behavior become idiotic - cannot avoid asteroids, and smash in collision course - a fact one is unable to avoid in high density asteroid fields, when you may get 6-10 rocks in a 1000m sphere, and lately the limpets started to "glue" on the asteroids surface, ( some stupid bug...) and you loose limpet after limpet - only way to get rid of this crappy bug is to abandon the place, desist of that rich rock(s) and move away some 1500-2000 in order to avoid each new limpet to rush to suicide himself...
Even nose-in, like you say, some frags will go away, and A LOT of them will disperse in crazy angles when the rock is rotating and have big asymmetric protuberances - something most of the "nose-in" fan-boys seems to ignore, strangely.
The nose-in ONLY work in static environment, but with fast rotating, pointy big rocks, noise-in strategy is one of the most stupid things to do when you are in a big, slow ship AND in a high density asteroid field.
And big ships like Vette, Annie, Cutter cannot "dance" around a rock easily, especially when next rock(s) are already scratching your hull, at 2-300m ....AND pirates lurking at 3-5 km....
I have some 7-8000h on this game, I usually mine in Haz places with big and fully armed ships ( Vette, Annie, Cutter,etc) and before Odyssey I only needed some 40% or fewer limpets from my full cargo load in order to fill all - now I need 60% or more to get the same load harvested - that because for the last month, immediately after Odyssey, I start losing a lot more limpets...
And I not even mentioned the 24/7 disconnects, the colorful snakes, who take a fair share of your limpets and re-spawn you right in the middle of hungry wings of pirates....