With industry a focus of the current expansion, I figure it's probably a good time to look at mining drones (for a release sometime in the near future of course). It wouldn't take much to improve them, and they could certainly use a facelift.

1) Give mining drones a microwarpdrive, but make their mwd speed roughly the same as it is now, and reduce their normal speed to something a lot slower (say, 50m/s). This will allow them to orbit the asteroid at a slow rate, giving the impression of floating in space while they work instead of zipping around it, giving the lasers the effect of rubber bands.
2) Re-do their laser effect to fire in bursts, using updated effects.
3) Instead of having a swirly light thing occur at the point of impact, have dust and little bits of rock float away from the asteroid and slowly vanish. Much more industrial. Consider this for all mining lasers, actually.
4) A new model, much in the vein of the salvage drones (industrial style rather than robot insect).
5) Have ORE reverse engineer the blueprint of the harvestor drones which they will sell at their outposts. i.e. make harvestor drones useful.
6) Also have ORE release a super-heavy mining drone at 50m3, because geckos are cool and I want to put a mining laser on one.

part of the problem is also the barges lack of drone-bay too allow for combats and mining drones

Exhumers can wield both.