I apologize if this information is already out there, but I couldn't find it on my initial search. I finally have enough badges to get the ally, however my mining is only 3.6k/hr. I don't think that's sufficient to afford the upkeep. What would a realistic mining production be to afford vortov's upkeep?

Bro, do you want a max toxic? Come over to The Unknown and I can alert one for you

Honestly, a fair bit more than that.

Every 1k MP per hour works out to about 1 Billion credits a day, depending on your rank of course.

Vortov starts at 2.5B/day, up to around 10B/day for the Rank 100 version.
So if your current upkeep is okay for everything else, you'd probably want at least 2-2.5k MP/hour extra

5 maxed toxics like the one Plurv has kindly offered and you should be sweet for a while

alright thanks. I have plenty of maxed toxics on scan. Just always been more focused on arti production. Just wanted to know how much Vortov was going to affect my planet selections

This ally is useless until full upgraded so unless you have the badges and the mp/h to get it and max it you'd be best of leaving it for now.

^ Bingo. Was gonna write this earlier but was too lazy.

^^ is why im buying the ranking badges now and going to buy the ally after i have all the rank badges