The Strike is THE most influential design in CE.
It was the base of which ALL of EA's mass-production MS was based on with its multirole loadout concept.
Even ZAFT adopted the same concept with the ZAKU Warrior, and had their own Strike clone in the form of the Impulse.
ORB as well took inspiration from it with the Akatsuki having multiple loadout options.
>>23448496
>If ZAFT had stolen the Strike and left the Duel, the Strike wouldn't have been anywhere near as effective.
In that hypothetical situation I believe it would have been a very similar situation for the 2 Gundams.
ZAFT wouldn't have access to the Striker Packs which were loaded on the Archangel, so they would have to make their own add-on equipment for Strike a la the Assault Shroud. But the different loadout capability of the Strike would still be a mainstay that ZAFT would adopt.
While the Archangel crew would most likely have to do modifications to the Duel in order to be able to fit the Striker Packs onto the Duel, essentially converting the Duel into a pseudo-Strike. This would most likely still lead to the EA adopting the Strike's multirole loadout concept as the effectiveness of the Striker Packs on the modified Duel would have proven the concept for them.