Science & Industry

Assuming you’re not after mercoxit the hulk delivers, skill-for-skill boost-for-boost, the most ore. However it is not as tanky as either the skiff or the mackinaw. So your choice of exhumer will depend on your approach to eve mining and what you’re wishing to achieve.

Of course you can always play tank off against ore harvest rates by juggling your lowslot fittings and your rigs. IIRC the hulk has a little over half the ore-hold capacity of the skiff. I assume the mackinaw is in-between.

For me a single hulk is a bit of a PITA, because it does not tank the rat spawns well enough to reliably kill them all with 5 medium drones. Three or more hulks, however, kill even the multiple-BS rat spawns pretty quickly. All the same I mostly use skiffs, and tend to only undock the hulks when I am planning to clear a belt for some low-end manufacturing minerals. I do get less ore per picosecond with the skiffs but never have to worry about the rats, only need one crystal at a time, have less fiddling to do, and align-warp GTFO much faster than the other exhumers. Others seem to prefer mackinaws for both their ore and ice mining needs.

A skiff, or its T1 predecessor, is also likely to be much more gank-survivable if you’re a hisec miner. The skiff also has a much larger drone bay, which lets me use mediums for rats, EC-300s just-in-case, and warriors because … well … warriors are like bowties (cool!).

Yes, jet-canning is still a thing, although with freighter buffs you will see more of the larger freight containers used instead. Also hisec miner gangs often use orca / freighter combinations for major efforts … using the orca’s fleet hangar in lieu of the jet can. In hostile space I jet-can using a cloaky miasmos (ore specialist gallente industrial) to clear out the cans. With the specialist holds these gallente industrials free up their fitting slots to let you make them fairly fast for GTFO and have some defensive capacity.
In hisec I use the orca / freighter combo, but have not mined there for some time now.

For mercoxit I use dedicated skiffs fitted with a merc-rig. I tend not to use mining drones, despite their potential benefits, mainly because of the increased fiddle-factor involved.

The ore holds and the other specialist holds were added during the various buff/nerf cycles we’ve seen over recent years. I like some and despise others but, hey, that’s how eve rolls.

Don't jetcan mine in hisec. It's like paying someone to gank you.

The Hulk (and Covetor) is now a fleet ship. It basically has enough room for a few crystals, and about two strip cycles. That's it. No point in using one unless you have a hauler.

All the mining barges have the same base yield despite different number of strips. They can of course be fitted differently (tank or yield).

Most people use either a Procurer (or Skiff) for tank, or a Retriever for cargo. The Retriever is usually the best bet for hisec mining; cheap enough to lose.

Exhumers being expensive and easy to gank, attract unwanted attention. The Skiff takes effort to gank, but is still an expensive ship.

I've not seen a Covetor in a very long time. I think they are only used to build Hulks now.

Mining Safely

In terms of raw ore per cycle, yield-fit Hulk vs. yield-fit Skiff are quite close (roughly 10%). But, the Hulk has additional cycle time bonuses that widen the gap to about 30% if you measure in terms of ore extraction per second.

I'll use my fleet miners as an example (all skills that affect yield at V, with full Orca boosts and MX-1005 implant (+5%), T2 crystals and max MLUs fitted):

Skiff: 3868 m3 per cycle (98.6 sec)
Hulk: 1412 m3 per laser, per cycle (4236 m3 per 82.8 sec)

Hulk's per cycle advantage is ~9.5%, but when you calculate m3/sec:
Skiff: 39.23 m3/sec
Hulk: 51.16 m3/sec

Hulk m3/sec advantage is ~30.4%

Bottom line: +30% yield/sec is pretty significant advantage.