Mining is really underpowered. It would take a year or more to make mining effective in money making. VIP would be nice too.
You purchase a super drill which uses a different battery. The super drill you bought will mine 2X faster but the battery for the super drill is more expensive than the regular battery. This is good for gathering minerals quickly in case the player decides to mine last second right after their weapon has rusted. In exchange, you are not getting profit from mining as you are ending up paying more money for the battery than what you earn from minerals.
Players keep asking other players for minerals because they don't want to mine for various reasons. Sometimes the player might be willingly to spend extra money to get minerals faster so they can repair their weapon with less waiting time.