Should we let them have it for free, they would sponsor us in a coalition faction. We did not know what that meant. The leader rolled his eyes and explained. Now that we were actually deep in the mid-game, we could kick of the late game. Once a faction got control of 9 transmission hubs, the blueprints for the XX-frames would begin to drop among that faction's clan members. New clans in those regions would be slightly easier to form and X-frames would once again be the price they were at the very start of the game. Their explanation went beyond that. When the XX-frames were built, they could spawn in the AEA units. A coalition faction could cross the normal lines of the 3 factions to get the job done. The rates the blueprints would drop would be proportional to the amount of members in each faction. Now that they had 8 hubs again, they could add Researcher clans to get to the 9. Our clan would only get a fraction of the benefit for the coalition, but the Researchers were a dark horse faction anyway. We were ahead with the we had technology too. It could actually work out for us.
Obviously, this was a giant decision. We were going to have to call them up and ask them what to do. Heat Clan was shocked. "You want to know our position!? I thought you would have gone rogue and tried a confederacy. My fears were not realized. Paul, Brett and I did not know what that was." After digging around in the library and then in our in-game encyclopedias, we found the answer. It had several conditions. However, it was essentially a coalition between members in a single hub's area. I was really curious. The members of the confederacy would then collaborate to make one XX-frame. It was the ultimate sign of no confidence in a leader. It was a big failsafe against the humans if they took control of several hubs, making a 9 transmission hub faction impossible. The conditions were tedious though:
