Ok, so this isnt so much an idea about an Ally, as it is about a new system of Allies.
How about we get Allies that are ranked with spending badges on them?

There could be one for each color of badge, but you could only pick one of them.
The "Red" Ally would be focused more on Attack, Defense and PVP. it would be ranked with spending Red Badges.
The "Blue" Ally is based around hacking, so it makes sense it would be targeting scan or cloak, maybe adds an ability, to reduce enemy ships hacking defense(cloak and scan) by a certain amount?
The "Yellow" one, i haven't really figured out yet, but im open to suggestions. higher chance of raiding or something?
The "Green" Ally would be aimed towards improving planets, maybe by adding extra defense to guarded planets only, or something similar.
The "Silver" Ally would be helpful against bases, improving base attack, and defense by a set % also improving your chances of raiding bases.
The "Black" Ally is NPC based, and would add NPC attack and Defense, and possibly other things.

Of course, you can change, or add or remove whatever feels like its missing, or overkill to any of these, to make them fit better into the game.
Now, to the leveling system of these allies: 1 badge per lvl? 2 per lvl? starting at 1-5 increase by 1 for every 5-10 lvls? Probably something that would be different with each color.
Of course, the Black Ally, if its ranked by black badges, would have to cost way more badges than any of the other ones, since the Black ones are, by far, the easiest to get more of.
What does everyone think?

It is an interesting idea, there are only two problems i can think of right away with the set.

First the ease/difficulty of raising the allies ranks as black, blue, red and yellow would be a bit easier for most of the pvp/npc heavy players i would suggest implementing a timer or something similar to also slow down its growth as a few well placed arts would help them max very quickly. The silver is the most balanced as they would have to regularly farm easy bases with thier legion, the green is the biggest problem of the set though as many have in other topics green badges can be gotten fairly easy through people passing a planet back and forth so some players would be able to ranks it regularly through the shared playstyle while others would struggle to get and would cost into the trillions of creds.

The second problem is the balance of bonus with the number of allies you can get because it would be potentially overpowering for a few who can regularly add to all of the badges, but could also be at the point where it isn't worth the effort.

yes to all barr green badge one, as there is already an ally which levels from an invasion typed senario

Right, I was talking to a guy in Ni a month or so ago, and he had 6,000 dark badges, so he could probably instant rank 100 the dark badge ally.

-1 to anything scan though.

+1 to the idea.

Interesting, perhaps there could also be an ally that requires a mixture of all the badges to rank up.

i like it. badges + allies = awesome new use for badges +1

this would be the idea I would play off of. and have only one ally that gets increasingly harder combinations of badges. And the combinations also get harder based on strength and rank of person equipping the ally so the guy from Ni with 6k Dark badges can't max level in a day ;P

depends on the price of each rank. If the price for example started at 50 Dark Badges, then increased by 10 badges for every 2 lvls.
If my math is correct, he would spend over half those badges getting it to lvl 30, and he'd be completely out before lvl 45.
You could also make it possible to get it over lvl 100, with a max of 150, 200, 250 or even higher. As far as i know, there is no rule that says the max lvl has to be 100.
Also, putting a timer on it would work. For example, having to wait a minimum of 8 hours between each rank, to give the ship time to assimilate and integrate the upgrades into its existing systems, or something like that.

This sounds like a good idea to me.
Theres obviously a lot of potential in the concept of badges for allies.

sounds good, +1

+1 to your +1.