I was just fooling around today, and to say hi to a guildmate, I was gonna flash my mining beams at him....

Surprise surprise..... The beams locked onto his ship, and began to mine him... I was flying a Centaur MK II with 2 Heliocene mining beams and a mineral scanner installed... He was in a plain Atlas MK I. I repeated this procedure 4 seperate times, and was able to mine him on each occasion. I filled my cargo hold with 48 Premium Silicate Ore from his ship.... I have screenshots of this event, but do not know where to host it so I can post a link here.... (I also gained XP from mining him +5 per crate)

I sent a bug report to the devs a little while ago detailing how to activate the bug, so it should be gone by the next update. (I hope)

you can mine all sorts of stuff you should not be able to

You should totally be able to use this as a tactic heat up another ship with mining lasers and impair them (drain energy? Slow energy recovery? reduce top speed?). Turn this bug into a serendipitous feature!

Oh, but nix the gaining ore from them, that's not cool. (pictures a pilot in a helmet startled to find nothing left of his ship but the command seat and steering yoke).

I think that would actually be really cool - having the mining beam be able to drain hull integrity slowly, while actually giving the miner minerals that would depend on what ship was targeted.

Of course, if anyone thinks this could be exploited somehow...