Currently capships will not mine without a beam attached, though the attached beam doesnt seem to be used.. I was "sure" I was initially mining without a beam attached at one point but it doesnt work now.

You can dock, take control, fire your beam, undock, /msg capship mine, then fire three beams on a bhm2 for a total of five beams hitting a rock. Four of which you gain xp for and see progress bars for..

Additionally, you can /msg capship follow and your beams will continue to target despite the distance to the roid from your capship. Docking at a station will halt your primary equipped beam.

And of note, firing an hd and your built-in capship beam will keep relative pace with a bhm2 firing three hds.

Thanks for the reports.

You don't receive XP from your capship mining and won't see progress rates.

correct. this is just one of those scenarios where the details of how things work are unknown, so i assume that either firing two beams is a bug, or that not being able to fire the built in beam without a beam attached is a bug, etc. ^_^

These issues are fixed. Mining stops when you launch and when you command your capship to do something else.