Originally posted by Sountrex:

Right so you want me to waste time building a ♥♥♥♥ shack next to a NON-RESPAWNING ONE-TIME NODES just to smelt the bars, and after you smelt them what then? You still have to HAUL them back to your base painfully even if it's in the black forest.

i dunno - most of the ore nodes are close to each other so no need to build a whole smelter right next to it
and even if one does that, one could build a crafting table right next to it and process the ingots right there.

but still - no matter how much weight an ingot has
one will move back and forth to the base no matter if one has ingots or not

option are

beeing more flexible (nobody forces one to have a main base 10km away)

using the ways of transportation the game has to offer (carts boats)

or gather and process all ore deposits in a larger area and then make some larger hauls back to base

imho making the ingots lighter would only mean one can pack more ingots but mostly it would stay the way it allready is
as people tend to have "the master base" which means they will hurl all sorts of stuff there no matter if that stuff is needed there or not

i might add - one will get attacked/raided by trolls and greydwarfs no matter where the mainbase is

my 2 cents here
can i get a hand full of popcorn?