Keep in mind that this is all in regards to my personal headcannon for the toys sitting on my shelf
>>23566298
>reminder that doms are the endgame unit in the 0079 novels because they are armed with beam sabers and beam bazookas as standard weapons
Yes, though see below
>>23566283
>Tech progression in the OYW is fast but this is the reverse and borderline stasis.
Kinda sorta. Looking at later Cold War weapons development, you've got 50 year old designs that are still in service. The airframe/mobile suit design may be old but weapons they use are upgraded and internal parts would have incremental improvements. Having a unit be obsolete after 5 months or less just seems ridiculous
>You gave everyone a reason to never stop wartime levels of production and Zeon 10 whole years to cement their control over their Earth possessions and start bringing those industrial lines over to Zeon mobile suits.
Maybe Zeon produced a shitton of Zakus early on that are still in service. Maybe they went for a high/low setup where Zakus fill the occupation role for these territories while Doms and Gelgoogs are the F35 and F22 analogues. Maybe in my setting Doms are ground use only and Gelgoogs are an expensive wonder-unit that can do ground and space, but are due to cost are more like special forces units
>They should be pumping out Dom and Gelgoog descendants by UC 0089.
They may well be, but also maybe a Zaku machinegun with a beam-infused HEAT warhead is perfectly capable of puncturing Luna Titanium.

That's not getting into the Federation side. There's all kinds of GM variants that could be in use, up to GM IIs, GM customs, and GM ground-types. I also don't like Gundams themselves, so changing the setting to focus on grunt suits is fun to me.