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[muxecoid]

There are three ways to get allies. You can use disruption weapons and rewire disabled robots. At the time you rewire it not is  half dead. You can build them from schematics, this requires good hackware. You can summon zionites.
Did anyone manage to get a good summoner run? All non-programmer robots are stolen by enemy programmers way too easily. I feel there should be a way to rewire zionites back. Zionite programmers are nice, but can't hit the flying swarmers with their inaccurate riot guns. You will need a way to deal with it. Heroes are also nice, but low in numbers. Also your army is easily destroyed by traps, traps that sever parts are the deadliest.
The good fun part is that if you have a proximity field and a lot of energy your army can become very powerful against conventional weapons. I guess if you find a stash of tactical analysis suites your army can fight against fliers, but this is not reliable.

[Kyzrati]

There are several more ways to get allies that you seem to be missing, including one of the major ones: robot hacking. Have you tried RIF yet? It's pretty decent and comes with many other perks. Actually, it's good that you brought this up because it's inspired a new related buff I think would be quite appropriate: if you've currently attached a matching coupler for a given robot class, that class of your allies will be immune to reprogramming.

In terms of protecting your allies in general, there's also defensive hackware you can take advantage of to keep them from being reprogrammed, though I think due to the past changes in the robot hacking system overall (since that value was originally set) it could be about time to consider further amplifying its effect.

I think in general you want to use allies in small numbers and/or short bursts, since having a large army ends up causing more trouble than it's worth unless you're moving through floors very quickly! There are a few places where having an army comes in very handy, though also in those cases they're still basically an "expendable" means to an end

[muxecoid]

I only watched the RIF stream and it did not seem like a fun or powerful way to play. Couplers take way too many slots. Zero mass allows faster propulsion, but it is still too many slots. Perhaps giving hacking immunity will help. But what about derelict couplers?

System shield protection is not that high even when meeting P-70, once you see P-80 it is useless unless superstacked. It helps you when you perform many failed hacks on same terminal, but as imprinted you do not perform that many hacks. Perhaps Makeshift system shield should provide more protection to allies and less detection protection?

[Kyzrati]

Ah if you mean you watched my stream, that was back when RIF was first introduced, and it's gotten a number of buffs since then (I will be doing another at some point). It does, however, tend to take up a fair number of slots if you want to take the widest advantage of it. (Though that's really how most play styles work--gotta double down on it if you want that power!) Beta 8 also added the Hcp. storage, so carrying even more couplers is a possibility, not to mention the other advantages added since I did my run, like higher coupler value and free Garrison hacking.

Derelicts are outside the scope of couplers, so that's not going to happen (who knows, maybe one day there will be an alternative, though right now the other methods are required when against derelicts, which isn't too common anyway, since most are friendly to begin with).

System shield protection is not that high even when meeting P-70, once you see P-80 it is useless unless superstacked.

Right, that's why I said I think it should be buffed given the new rules. Under the old robot hacking system, people did raise armies through hacking and allies weren't as valuable since they were a dime a dozen, whereas now a Programmer is quite a dangerous enemy. I mean they're supposed to be dangerous to allies and I don't want to make it too easy to counter them, but we could definitely use some buffs there.

[Kyzrati]

To add to this discussion, there are some new changes coming with Beta 9 that will enhance summoner builds.

All defensive hackware will prevent Programmers from hacking allies at double the former rate. Not amazing, but it at least offers better protection than is currently available.

More importantly there will also be a way to make some allies immune to hacking, along with a number of other buffs specifically geared towards the summoner build.

This and more will be covered on the blog by the time Beta 9 is out

(Normally I'd post at least one relevant screenshot here or give more details, but this new stuff is top secret and hasn't been announced yet! It might be part of next week's stream though, where I'm going to share parts of Beta 9.)