...but its a bit silly that you have to switch between engine, reactor, scanner and mining lazer for a basic function like mining.
Agree, but you can use you Basic Ship for scanning and Trucker for mining... At those prise of BTC doesn't matter where you mine: Green or Red sector 
If it could be swapt in space or if swapping would not require cooldown time it would be a little bit better.
I wondering drop mined copper to station just "drag&drop" in SG2 (lesser docking)...
@toecutter: Lag appears when NPC start acting in randome time. Please fix CPU
