I was recently working with some mining drones, just 4 at the time but I did not think they were working fast enough, so, I brought a few more my next trip, then they started to slam into each other and make a mess of things. So, I was thinking, each drone should go one at a time, based on their place in the fleet, pinging an asteroid and marking it, using a max of 4 drones per asteroid so that when a 5th drone tries to mark that asteroid it sees the other 4 and instead scans for a different one to mine. This could mean the use of more drones would still be effective.
example:
Drone 1: scanning, asteroid 3. marked
Drone 2: scanning, asteroid 3. marked
Drone 3: scanning, asteroid 3. marked
Drone 4: scanning, asteroid 3. marked
Drone 5: scanning, asteroid 3. full. scanning, asteroid 4. marked
etc
example:
Drone 1: scanning, asteroid 3. marked
Drone 2: scanning, asteroid 3. marked
Drone 3: scanning, asteroid 3. marked
Drone 4: scanning, asteroid 3. marked
Drone 5: scanning, asteroid 3. full. scanning, asteroid 4. marked
etc