We have looked into out of sector mining and run some extended simulations. Aside from a discrepancy regarding the efficiency of mining fighters, which is now fixed, everything works as intended. We could not reproduce this problem.
To those of you having issues: are you playing single or multiplayer? Especially in multiplayer it's possible that sectors are unloaded for performance reasons. In Singleplayer this limit is practically unreachable.
We will be adding an indicator to sectors that are unloaded and thus not simulated for you to diagnose this.
Qui_Sum, as I stated above, I have already tested and proven the issue is not an unloaded sector. Our multiplayer game used mining ships with ONE mining laser equipped to the "top" side of the ship. So the arc was limited. When we added mining lasers to the left, right, and bottom sides the mining ship would no longer "stop working". As well our mining carriers did not run into the bogging issue, because of the way fighter AI mines.
Which says to me that HarvestAI is not checking its turret firing arcs and repositioning the ship, like it does when you are in the sector, so that the laser can see the asteroid the ship is trying to mine. From a coding perspective, I can see how this would be the issue, as a sector that's loaded with no player is not rendered (or shouldn't be) and is just calculations running in the background so there is no ship model to orient. Yet the calculations are trying to orient the laser towards the asteroid and can't. If this is the case, I suggest that the HarvestAI be adjusted to not include firing arc or turret position... but only to take number of lasers, dps, and efficiency into account when determining mining yields and assume the laser is omnidirectional (even if it means firing through a hull which should then be made to have no collision).
This is obviously only for the OOS HarvestAI script... the IS HarvestAI script works fine and can be left alone.
If this is still unclear, or you are still unable to produce the problem, I can take a video of the issue.
Ps. thanks for the fighter fix, that makes mining fighters even more efficient while still utilizing high speeds.