The road building in Death Stranding is broken when it comes to material costs. It looks like it's supposed to increase as you progress through the story and map however it looks like they originally intended for the progress to go differently than in the final release and forgot to reflect that in the roads.
The road to the Craftsman gradually becomes more expensive. The Craftsman is also the only junction in the game. Then the story points you to South Knot City and the road prices jump significantly. Then the story points you to Mountain Knot City with a stop at Distribution Center North of Mountain Knot City. The road from the Craftsman to the Distribution Center North of Mountain Knot City becomes cheap again, only slightly more expensive than the road to him, but then you get punched in the gut when you see the cost of the road to Mountain Knot City from the Distribution Center. It's like 3-4 times more expensive than the road to the Distribution Center, but only slightly more expensive than the road to South Knot City.
I think I'm giving up on road building. Where am I supposed to get all the material? Raiding two MULE camps for metals and ceramics will probably only get me one or maybe two roads (especially since 3 of them aren't covered by the chiralium network, I think, I haven't progressed in the story that much as I'm only on my way to Mountain Knot City), which is doable, but where am I supposed to get all the chiralium? I'm not going to run around the map gathering double digit counts when I need probably like 15k.
@dyske
I haven't tried those yet. Maybe I should.
yeah I built some Lake city with south, but when I got zip lines I kinda stopped. Since I handled most of the standard deliveries with them.