Weird ore glitch / exploit.

[magnemoe]

This was fun, has gotten multiple contracts mining ore on Duna and transfer to Ike. 
Has done this with an ore carrier probe, however once I got complete before the ore carrier arrived at Ike, it was completed just by going to my Ike base 

This got me thinking so the next time I did not launch I just had enough ore on both places and switched to Ike base, contract fulfilled. 
Requirements are.
1) Mine 2000 fresh ore on source location, 2) have 2000 ore on source location 3) have 2000 ore on target location if its transported from source, is mined locally or earlier does not matter. 

An mine ore on the Mun and send to Kerbin contract could probably be solved by mining ore on mun, have ore on station, then putting some full ore tanks and an probe core on pad. 

Edited July 18, 2016 by magnemoe

[KerikBalm]

I wondered that and posted about this exploit long ago

 

Edited July 18, 2016 by KerikBalm

[Snark]

Yup, they don't trace ore at all.  Which stands to reason-- it would be a major pain trying to keep track of "where did ore come from" given that ore can be pumped, mixed, etc.  Resources are just numbers associated with a capacity; there's no way of keeping track where a particular resource "came from".

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

1) Mine 2000 fresh ore on source location, 2) have 2000 ore on source location 3) have 2000 ore on target location if its transported from source, is mined locally or earlier does not matter. 

In fact, it's even simpler than that!  You don't need step 2.  When the contract says "have 2000 ore on your ship", the word "ship" simply means "whatever ship you happen to be flying at the moment", not necessarily the ship that extracted the ore.

Therefore, all you need to do in order to complete contracts like this:

1. Mine 2000 fresh ore at the appropriate location.  You don't need to keep it.  You can, for example, refine it to fuel as you mine it, or whatever else you like.
2. Have a ship-- any ship-- in the destination location with 2000 ore.  For example, if the destination is Kerbin, you can just launch a new ship that already has 2000 ore on board, and the contract will complete the instant your ship spawns on the launchpad.

Yes, it's a bit of a hole.  I suspect that the reason it's there is that the only way not to have that hole would be to try to construct a system for keeping track of "which units of resource came from which location", which would be a major pain in the fundament to try to implement (given the way you can mix resources; mine from multiple locations, pump them from one container to another, etc.)

[magnemoe]

Just now, Snark said:

Yup, they don't trace ore at all.  Which stands to reason-- it would be a major pain trying to keep track of "where did ore come from" given that ore can be pumped, mixed, etc.  Resources are just numbers associated with a capacity; there's no way of keeping track where a particular resource "came from".

In fact, it's even simpler than that!  You don't need step 2.  When the contract says "have 2000 ore on your ship", the word "ship" simply means "whatever ship you happen to be flying at the moment", not necessarily the ship that extracted the ore.

Therefore, all you need to do in order to complete contracts like this:

1. Mine 2000 fresh ore at the appropriate location.  You don't need to keep it.  You can, for example, refine it to fuel as you mine it, or whatever else you like.
2. Have a ship-- any ship-- in the destination location with 2000 ore.  For example, if the destination is Kerbin, you can just launch a new ship that already has 2000 ore on board, and the contract will complete the instant your ship spawns on the launchpad.

Yes, it's a bit of a hole.  I suspect that the reason it's there is that the only way not to have that hole would be to try to construct a system for keeping track of "which units of resource came from which location", which would be a major pain in the fundament to try to implement (given the way you can mix resources; mine from multiple locations, pump them from one container to another, etc.)

I know they can not track ore, however I assumed they tracked the ship, I assumed you had too at least take off with the ore, yes you could probably dump it and fill up with new ore at Ike. 
if step two can be fulfilled at target this makes things even simpler. 

Its a bit hard to solve as it would be good practice to move ore from an base to an ship for transport anyway. Base would often not be able to move anyway. 
This is nice for me who is establishing mining bases on all bodies.