idk if it's intentional, but this means the strategem of smelting ore on site to increase the effective weight of metal you can carry back to base is useless.

Personally, I think the devs should reconsider. It should take, for instance, 1.25 ore to smelt one ingot. You would have to stay in the biome and expose yourself to more of it's dangers if you wanted to take advantage and smelt on site.