This is a listing of some ideas I have for what a scaling pet should look like in terms of numbers and stats and how those stats should be pulled from the nanoskills of the caster. Following which I'll post some theoretical pet extrapolations from stat numbers at various levels.
The idea is that pets already have one factor scaling from the master: Runspeed is 1.25 times the caster's current runspeed on casting or zoning. From this it seems (from the player's angle) that it would be a simple matter to simply have other aspects of the pet be scaled from the master's nanoskills as well.
The stats of a pet are pretty simple when you break it down: They have an attack rating, pure AAO with no weaponskills, a defensive rating, once again pure AAD and no evades, a nano resist rating (which may or may not be broken), weapons they use, and runspeed, which as above is calculated from the master's runspeed. If there's any other stats of interest that a pet has, they're not known to me at this time.
An idea that occurred to me that would be a simpler answer to how to have pets (which are the primary part of our toolset and also the weakest) that would be effective in the future would be to have them scale to the master's nanoskills, but how was problematic until I realized that simply having a multiplier similar to how the pet's runspeed was calculated would do the job, while also making the pet less complicated as well as easy to figure out the numbers on.
All that remains would be to determine what nanoskills would affect what parts of the pet, and what the multiplier(s) would be.
Time and Space seemed like a natural to use to calculate AR. This is THE nanoskill for MPs, so basing attack rating off of this is only natural. As an optional idea, having the level of the pet be determined by the skill in Time and Space would be cool, but would do nothing else besides the old standby of the MP having a deep red pet to them.
Matter Creation would likely determine the weapon equipped by the pet. MP pets tend towards multiple weapons, but as the method of determining weapon damage is not well known (Xtremtech suspected when he wrote the Big MP Guide that it was a set of weapons that had their ql at the level of the pet when cast) Having the weapon ql be determined by Matter Creation seems only appropriate, however I will also state that regardless of QL that MP pet damage probably needs to be reworked all over anyways.
Biological Metamorphosis would be used to determine the maximum HP of the pet, naturally. As an optional factor Bio Met could be used to determine a healdelta bonus to the pet, a straight number as opposed to a percentage (which won't work, as Healthy Manifestation proved)
Matter Metamorphosis would be the statistic that both defensive stats would be derived from, the straight defense stat as well as Nano Resist.
That pretty much wraps it up for the nanoskills and what they cover (not much point including PM/SI since they're not directly used in casting a pet). Now for the point of importance: The multiplier.
Runspeed is suspected of being multplied at a rate of 1.25 of the master's CURRENT runspeed on casting or on zoning. This is to help the pet keep up with the master and also give it the ability to chase running targets. Simply using the same calculations but with other variables as input and output would lend itself to making a very dynamic pet that would be a true reflection of the master. Here's how multipliers would work on a pet, with several examples given.
Let's take the current multiplier of 1.25, the one used by the calculation for Runspeed. Using that, a TS rating of 125 would net you a pet with 150 AR as a base, a TS of 500 would net you 625 AR, 1000 TS would net 1.25k AR, and moving up towards the endgame, 2.1k AR would net you 2625 AR and 2.8k would net you 3500 AR base.
That same multiplier could also be applied to the defense/Nano Resist calculation (though it seems a bit much to me, or it could just be a straight 1 multiplier, aka the master's MM is the pet's defense/nano resist.
To calculate Max HP, a multiplier of 10 or 15 could be used. For a BM rating of 100, the pet will have either 1000 (x10) or 1500 (x15). For a BM rating of 500, HP would be either 5000 (x10) or 7500 (x15). For a BM rating of 2.1k, you get 21,000 (x10) or 31,500 (x15). For 2.8k you will see 28,000 (x10) or 42,000 HP (x15).
For the weapon, a new weapon template would be written, and then simply have MC divided by 10 and then have that be the weapon's QL. A weapon QL would be determined by simply lopping off the last digit (or rounding it if need be) of your MC rating. Another alternative would be, if the former were too difficult, to have the lopped off MC rating simply equate to the level of the pet summoned, since the level of the pet usually determines the QL of the weapon the pet uses. This method would have the side effect of capping potential max damage (since mobs cannot be over level 300 or things break), but the entertaining effect of having (for the first time in 120 levels) a pet that is red to you (if you have enough skill, that is!) which I think a number of MPs would be jumping for joy for regardless.
Trying this with other pet professions would be difficult, primarily because while MPs get the second best nanoskills in the game (with only PM and SI any better with NTs) but builds for Engis and Crats are vastly different, and applying the same specific multipliers for a flexible pet for them would wind up nerfing them severely (1400 TS/MC for Carlo would wind up with 1750 after the 1.25 multiplier is added, for instance) so if a similar pet were to be considered for Engineers and Bureaucrats, you would have to rewrite the pet from the ground up, since these professions will have completely different rates of nanoskills from what MPs have.