Truthfully, Strongshield is OP and for various reasons.
Pros:
She's Large, strong and has a resilient armour. One of the mega big boys (Megatron, Optimus, Dreadwing and Predaking.) It's literally in her name Strong-Shield.
Before the war she was a gladiator(Or Gladiatrix for female term) and during her time at war for cybertron when she was a decepticon, Strongshield was one of Megatron's captain(until he decide to screw her up) so she has combat experience up to her metal sleeve. Mind you Strongshield in the past was a wrathful bot, known for (almost) uncontrollable unhinged rage and aggression due to troubling past.(Caste System and the abuse.)
She's a Triple changer meaning she can turn into different alt modes and even those alt modes are bad boys at best with one for air being a ch-53e super stallion, a military helicopter and for land being Terradyne gurkha which is an armoured vehicle.
Being a former Decepticon captain now autobot, Strongshield does provide information to the team.
While all of these this does make Strongshield very convenient for Team Prime for many things if she were canon to the show, HOWEVER keeping in mind that Team Prime was a struggling team due to being in small numbers with limited utilities while the decepticon is a whole army with a warship, plus also keeping in mind when writing is that there's gotta be some flaws or setbacks so Strongshield has those to balance out.
While Strongshield is a whole unit, she can't be always be on the field and for various reasons so she would half of the time be at base with Ratchet and the only times Strongshield does get involved in the filled is if the circumstances is specific for her or it's all hands on desk situation.
Cons:
Being a big bot and a triple changer she does require a lot of energon but energon is limited on earth and energon scouting is pain in the ass when your enemy has everything to sustain themselves(and overall assholes) so Strongshield has to sit back a bit to preserve her energy unless situation calls......Though she can be stubborn to not jump in to assist the team the which clashes with Ratchet and it gets the old bots to bicker.
Because she's been buried deep in Antarctica it did cause some problems to Strongshield like some system damage (reference to s1 ep 7). So she has health problems due to hyperthermia and frost bites.
Strongshield is older than Ratchet, and while she does somewhat fair better than Ratchet to be on field and beat ass, she's not invincible to old age struggle at war.
I mentioned that Strongshield was a very wrathful bot in the past and while Strongshield does get character development, she struggled with her anger and aggressiveness and that stems from the abuse she endured as a low ranking bot and the PTSD which leads her to getting reckless and things getting out of hand to the point of so much damage that would almost get the autobots exposed to humans. So Strongshield has a warning on her from the government.
Bonus: Strongshield going on side quests with Fowler.
Finished All Hail Megatron and oh boy does PROWL HAVE A POINT.
Through this series we've seen Ironhide and Springer BOTH beat the steel out of Prowl because they didn't understand what was going on. And Prowl just takes it, no one bats an optic or asks if he's okay. No one says sorry. Nothing.
The Autobots have been fighting this war for a really long time, and Prowl is fed up with it, hell so am I! He crunches the numbers all day long and Optimus will just disregard all his effort at the drop off a hat. I would be angry too if I worked that hard and it didn't even matter.
Now, is installing subroutines in the back of Kup's processor a seriously messed up thing? Absolutely. But Prowl does have a plan that he thinks is worth it, so I can understand how he justifies it. I don't condone it, but I do get it.
On that note!! This "end justifies the means" angle is very in line with Decepticon philosophy, which we just heard a lot of with Megatron and Starscream's discussions.
(I also think it's a bit of functionism too, Prowl is frustrated that Optimus dismisses his logic for the suggestion of other warriors, taking their emotional heed over Prowls measured suggestion. SUPER frustrating.)
