Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-10747048-20130720211658/@comment-11482499-20130723151936

BumbledBee and 103.11.51.53: Actually I know this one fact about Ally-seeding to be true, based on my observations in the many episodes and also GodofCyanide's blog post on allies:

The fact is this: when you send out a Help Request on a boss, 25% of those help requests are sent to people taken (randomly) from your Ally List. 75% of those help requests get sent to everyone playing TFL - again, randomly chosen.

You'll notice Help Requests on bigger bosses are longer - and when you ask for help for an L8, 28 people are chosen (7 allies, 21 randos). For smaller bosses the help request is shorter - calling for help against a SS only brings 16 names - check the battle logs in the episode right now.

The upshot of all this is this:  If you have a long Ally List, any one ally is unlikely to get that particular seed. But if you have, say, only 7 allies, and you seed a L8 boss, ALL 7 of your allies will DEFINITELY get it, since the system will devote 7 of the 28 Help Request slots to allies - and you only have 7 allies. As another example, if you have 14 allies and seeded an L8, 50% of your allies will be summoned to help (still 7 slots). That's why my system would definitely work in theory (if coordination issues can be worked out). The implication of a long ally list is that any one of your seeds will probably not hit any one specific ally of yours since it's randomly chosen. But of course, you are more likely to receive seeds if you have a long list of powerful allies, so most people, including me, keep long ally lists.