Ore and Ice Mining

If you're new to mining, give the Introduction to Mining page a read to get some background knowledge.

Mining is a pretty straightforward activity in Eve, and can be done in almost every area of space. Start by finding an asteroid belt or mining anomaly. Once there, use your survey scanner to see how much ore is in the rocks around you, pick one, activate your mining lasers, and either orbit the rock or soft-align to a citadel. When your ore hold is full, you can empty it as-is into a citadel, or compress the ore using a rorqual, orca, porpoise, or refinery. Note that moon ore can only be compressed in a rorqual or orca.

Gas Harvesting

If you're new to gas harvesting, give the Gas Section of the Introduction to Mining page a read to get some background knowledge.

Gas can be found throughout New Eden, in 2 broad categories split between normal and wormhole space. Gas clouds spawn as Cosmic Signatures, and as such need to be scanned down before they can be accessed. Lowsec gas clouds can be harvested safely, while those found in all wormholes and most areas of nullsec have some risk-generating mechanic. Gas clouds are large objects, and usually only a handful are present per signature. This combined with the short range of your Gas Cloud Scoops means you'll mostly find yourself inside the clouds you're harvesting. Besides all that the idea is pretty much the same as mining. Note that gas can only be compressed by an Industrial Command Ship or Capital Industrial Ship.

Defensive Capabilities

The above fits are based on the skiff hull. The skiff gets roughly 65% more tank than the procurer and retains identical damage bonuses, giving it 117,000 - 125,000 EHP and about 200 - 315 DPS. Like with the procurer, the skiff is a formidable ship in its own right. When grouped with other skiffs and supported by Industrial Command Ships, skiffs become extremely difficult to kill, and may even be able to take on smaller organized fleets when threatened.

The hulk and mackinaw also have increased EHP compared to their barge counterparts, though at a closer to 2x multiplier. The Hulk maxes out at about 60,000 EHP, and the mackinaw around 75,000. Unfortunately both ships still lack a damage bonus, leaving them with a maximum of 150 DPS.

Mining Yield

Just like with mining barges, the three exhumer types have differing yields even with identical fits; Generally the hulk has the highest, the skiff the lowest, and the mackinaw somewhere in between. This evaluation assumes max skills, 2 Mining Laser Upgrades, and 2 Modulated Strip Miner IIs loaded with T1 Type A Crystals on each ship. The skiff / hulk yield ratio is much more significant than the procurer and covetor; the skiff has roughly 42.6% less yield than an equivalent hulk.