This is the mining section, where I (perhaps a little poorly) attempt to display any tips concerning the mining aspect of Frontier. It is admittedly, a little overrated and underused, and is, IMHO, a rather underdeveloped aspect of the game. If you have the original PC edition of FE2 it is also impossible; when hyperspacing out of a system with a deployed MB4 the game has been known to crash, the only option is to stay in the system and simply use the star dreamer time controls to speed things up a little, this may involve leaving the machine on overnight, and then there is the issue of hoping that your ship won't spontaneously blow up, and also hoping you can get back to a starport in time to service your ship, otherwise your hyperdrive will fall off. Which, if you have an Imp Courier or Trader is good thing, because it is a 'legitimate' way of upgrading your hyperdrive.
So anyway, there isn't much to this mining lark then, or is there? Well, it wouldn't be included if it wasn't intended as a viable option to the trade/military/mindless-killing-of-innocents that characterises FE2 and FFE. Below I have listed the types of mining available to you, whether it is a viable option (oh dear) and how best to go about it (or not).
This is an easy, if boring way, to make a piddly little bit of cash over a long period of time. You need: a big ship, a fuel scoop and a cargo scoop conversion. And atmospheric shielding and shield generators ARE advisable. Basically, you scoop fuel from a gas giant (or star) in a planetary system, whatever you need to refuel your ship's internal drive you keep, whatever is excess, you can sell off. Works best when you have a hydrogen drive, as using a military drive (if you have a small ship, to save space) will render this a waste of time due to the extortionate costs of military fuel (but if you have a hydrogen drive you won't need to spend credits on hydrogen fuel to refuel your ship). If you collect enough however, i.e. 200 tons or so, that'll make 2000 credits per trip. Unless you have a snazzy ship-editor thing and know how to use it, the biggest ship you can have for this sort of venture is a Boa Freighter. I don't think this is illegal in the Sol system, so dock at Columbus and scoop fuel from Jupiter, sell it off and repeat. A side benefit from this is practice of flying your ship manually in extreme situations, the autopilot is NOT generally recommended for this venture. The problem of this particular method concerns a little bug in FE2 and FFE: fly towards a gas giant, and the fuel scoops won’t scoop. Fly further into the planet, and two things will happen: a) You'll blow up, b) You'll fly straight through the planet. With hilarious consequences. If you have a lot of shield generators you may get stuck in the centre of the planet and not be able to escape. Which happened to me once.
Again you need a moderately large ship (enough to accommodate a 30 MW mining laser). What happens is you pilot the ship to within 3-5 km of the target asteroidal body, make sure whatever part of your ship has the mining laser is facing it, and blast away merrily. Scoop up whatever is given off from blasting the asteroid, this CAN give quick returns as some do actually have Precious Metals and Gem Stones, but some can (and do) give off rubbish, quite literally. Requires a certain degree of manual piloting skills, and I personally found that this method works best on FFE, with the tractor beam cargo scoop (as it is much easier to scoop up the debris). Beware of doing this in systems such as Sol where mining (except gas giant scooping) is illegal. Also, if you use the Star Dreamer time control, make sure that your velocity is relative to whatever you are blasting, as speeding things up could (and sometimes does) make the object smash into you.
First off, this requires a patch to correct a bug in the PC version of FE2 which causes the machine to crash if an MB4 is deployed and you hyperspace out of the system. Ideal locations are discussed in the manual; the planet(oid) must not be hotter than 250 degrees Celsius and naturally it helps if it is large enough to land on without your ship going Boom! Apparently, the mass of the planet should also be bigger than the Earth, about 1.5 to 2 times as massive to guarantee any reasonable deposits, but this is a trend which remains to be fully explored and corroborated. Having found your planet, land there* and deploy the MB4 up to about 30 times or so to make sure it comes across some reasonable deposits. You can get minerals which are fairly common, water ice, or a metal seam. Eventually the MB4 will have filled the hopper with either crap or goodies which you can then take to a starport and sell off.
*Landing tip: if you find that you keep crashing when you try landing on a planet, check that your velocity reference thing in the bottom right of the screen has locked on to the planet you are trying to land on, i.e. if you are landing on a planet, look in the bottom right hand corner and find that it still says the star of the system you are in, chances are that you will blow up. I have no problems landing on planets in either FE2 or FFE unless the frame of reference is a completely different body than the one I am trying to land on. One method of landing at planets is to adopt that seen in the film ‘Alien’. Basically you approach the planet directly and then, whilst still far out, head towards the top of planet, in theory you end up skimming into the atmosphere in a controlled way and gradually approach the surface of the planet. Watch the film and you will see what I mean. My method is to approach the planet directly, and basically leave it like that. Set your velocity extremely slow, about 1000km/h, and use the time control to speed things up (third setting) when you reach about 6500km, slow it down a little, as few planets of the sort you will mine have a diameter greater than Earth. You should then notice the altitude hit 50000m, put it onto normal time and slow up. Speed things up if necessary, don't forget to level out and lower the undercarriage. This takes a bit of practice to get a 'feel' of when to speed the time up and slow it down. It isn't perfect, but it works for me.