Mining ships are discussed here.
Harvestable resources can be grouped into 2 categories based on how ships carry them:
- Bulk storage (Ice, Nividium, Ore and Silicon).
- Liquid storage (Hydrogen, Ions and Plasma).
There are 3 main types of Mine ships:
- Medium miners, which harvest Bulk or Liquid wares.
- Large miners, which also harvest Bulk or Liquid wares.
- The Scaldis (harvests either type) or re-purposed Trade ships (harvests single or both types, but no mining laser).
Useful info from elsewhere on the web:
- Guide to visually ID 'roid types by Snafu_X3 (XRebirth forum link and direct MS Word 2003 doc link).
- Harvestable resource locations by Sparky Sparkycorp for v3.61 (link) and v4.00 b7 (link) - exploration spoilers.