My thoughts on the mining mod at the moment and what could be done.
switch fields to "on" or "off". No "low yield" category. The low yield category confuses people needlessly. Zero drop or Full drop is enough.
streamline drop/rock: every "on" field should have the same range of ore dropped per hit. Like: every asteroid in every switched on field should have: 0-6 dropping. Or is it 0-5 normally? I lost that file.
streamline rock spawn rate: it should be the same for all commodities/fields that are switched on.
Group mining fields instead of "every faction has theirs". Omega 7 is currently rather boring with 3 groups in 3 far far from each other places. I suggest 1 large field (5-8 k wide) for each commodity where miners of all colour go and meet.
Keep field drain switched off. The amount of oorp mad has decreased so much since the phrase "someone mined it out" is gone from the vocabulary.
Omega 7 ores need some differentiation. Silver/Copper/Cobalt all going to Narita is boring. Copper and Cobalt (both to Denver / Narita) should be different, or be mineable in a different system (suggestion: Omega 9?). They feel exchangeable.
PoB base placement and ore fields: We need a rule concerning that, imo, still. There should not be a PoB closer than 10-15k to an ore field. Denying then chance to interact because miners just hit dock is rather bad for gameplay. Total safety in an activity is bad (and boring). Perhaps new field placement and reduction of indivicual fields (see above) can solve the existing problems.
Don't introduce more mining commodities. We have 100 players on good days. If we create more mining hotspots, it will be even more difficult to meet and interact. There are other ways of strengtening regions as hub than giving new factions mining bonuses on new commodities.
The mining speed (on x3 and x4 modifiers) imo is perfect at the moment. It's long enough to allow for interaction, it's short enough not to get bored too fast even if soloing it, and it encourages group activity as this shortens it a lot.
I am not sure whether it is in the game again or not, but if not: bring back the small miner 20 % bonus. Small miners are good, as they have to work with another ship in contrast to solo mining.
Do not change mining laser refire. I remember well when there were certain people (2 years ago, don't worry) that cultivated the "afk mining" with taped down, auto-spinning Heges. With very fast refire, the chance of hitting rocks without aiming is low enough to make it not really feasible.
Comparable selling points in the main House systems to streamline traffic to a few hubs. Like: every ore goes to each House Capital for the same cred/second price.
Unlawful selling points: should exist, but not close to the destination to discourage "last system piracy" grieving. Atm, we have some close hauling locations with prices around 3-4k. Something like that would also work for unlawfuls. 2-3 systems away with a bottleneck between.
Redo/rescale the Hegemon model. It is absolutely unfit to operate as a miner. Try to fly one in the Tau 23 dense Niobium field.