I see you want mineral prices to go down, resulting in a net loss in profits for you. Why do you want to do that?

however, i disagree with your idea, except for the cruiser part, i would love to see cruiser type mineing ships, but they would need to be in between the current mineing frigates, and bargs

Ummmm... mining barges ARE cruisers.

Skip to the 7:00 mark for the cool mining stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8SOZxCXokg

Interesting. Shame, though, looks dead as a door nail (never quite got that saying). Better idea for mining that what we have now. Concept like that would probably turn out a no-show like comet/ring mining were anyways.

How about just making mining more interesting than watching grass grow and turning it into more of an active profession and less of an AFK activity?

Lets Do some improvements to the industry. I purpose the following

Laser Count
First off, 1-3 lasers is very yawn. Lets reduce the cycle time, and Cycle amount, but increase the amount of lazers possible on the barges. This will help improve the fun factor of mining.

Mining Drones and Mining Cruisers
There is some cruisers (tech I) in game that get marginal bonus's to mining (like the arbi),
however these bonus's to not encourage you to use the arbi as a mining ship (Making the bonus useless).
In order for these bonus's to be competitive, the arbi would need around 250% Mining Bonus per a level just
to even out.

i purpose + 2 Mining drops per a cruiser level, and 50% Base Mining bonus per a level. (btw, arbi needs it's drone
damage buffed, or to grant 2 drones per a level for combat aspects).

This would put the arbi at perfect skills around 2000 ore per a 180sec cycle, which is just under the mining barges.

Mixing up the mining ships

Fix the fittings for all barges to equal of that of the procurer. Grant all barges 6-8 Beams. Brant all barges + 1-2 High slots (for things like cloaking) But retain the same mining rate on the barges. This will make all barges better at survival in all area's of eve (having something like the current proc's tank). From here we change the bonus's

Proc - Ore Mining Something Similar to current bonus rates.
Cov - Ice Mining - Something similar to current bonus rates
Retr - Ore Mining. + 2 Mining Drones per a level, + 50% mining drone speed Per a level. Role Bonus: + 200% Mining drone amount. 1 high slot


Then we give similar changes to the exhumers are the above barge changes (but using the skiff as a default go-to).

Venture and Prospect should get similar "Quantity" Beam upgrades.


Add New Mining Ships

The "Harvester". A new Tech III Mining Barge. Obtains Covert-ops Cloaking, Is Very Quick, Agile, Equal mining to other ships.
+ 25% Ore Hold per a Level, + 10% Strip Miner m3 amount per a level. Can Compress its Ore.

This ship should have in the area of 20-25 Days train time from Start, and should work out to be something between barge, and exhumer.

Skip to the 7:00 mark for the cool mining stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8SOZxCXokg

Why not just turn mining barges into high-sec titans and only allow mining barges the ability to use smart bombs in high-sec without any consequences but only in asteroid belts. Also whilst we are at it give them 100,000,000,000,000 addition hp and a big enough hold so they don't have to unload for several days. In addition to that allow them 24 mining turrets so the pilots can watch all the pretty lasers at work that's assuming they're not afk of course.

Mining Drones and Mining Cruisers
There is some cruisers (tech I) in game that get marginal bonus's to mining (like the arbi),
however these bonus's to not encourage you to use the arbi as a mining ship (Making the bonus useless).

...

Maybe a new type of Mining Barge should build around the T3 Destroyer configuration. You could select from Mining Configuration that increase the barges strip miner range, yield and reduce the cycle time. Defensive Configuration would add an additional 50% bonus to armor and shield resistances with a 25% boost to hull resistances. Velocity Configuration would increase the overall velocity of the barge by 250%

The barge could be configured on the fly or while in the station.

Surely that would pretty much make all the other barges redundant?

Personally I think the current state of barges and mining is fine, the only thing that would be of benefit is the introduction of some variant of the Comet Mining idea for better yield/more dangerous active mining. This would exist alongside mining in it's current form to reward active players more whilst allowing existing players to continue as they are.