LAMs themselves are really good units, but they cost so much BV that you can get the same thing by just taking a bunch of fast hovertanks or a bunch of 7/11/7 mechs. The thing is right now CGL doesn’t really want to do anything with LAMs until they go and redo the aerospace rules, which the aerospace rules themselves are really bad, sorta…
Okay, SC is for better or worse is supposed to be what Chris Robert wanted Freelancer to be. And about Freelancer itself, it is part of the space sim lite milsim type of games like X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Wing Commander were back in the day. Now there is another game series that sorta shares the same lite milsim type gameplay loop, just with this thing called a Battlemech, and yes it’s Mechwarrior.
Since we covered the basics of what SC is intended to be, let’s go back to the context of the original kickstarter, 2012-13. Nearly every single developer was going very far out of their way to strip down games in a way that made them feel very disposable, and nobody (except for a canadian studio by the name Pirhana Games with Mechwarrior Online) had any interest in making any sort of game in the vein of the lite milsims of the 90s and early 2000s. And imho judging by the stuff made in the recent years in the space these developers also bent over backwards for mass appeal that was honestly never going to happen. So of course Star Citizen took off like it did and never looked back.
Honestly I want to say that on some level people knew Chris Roberts was on some level going to be a problem for the development of the game, but the idea of having a new space lite milsim that out right said “learn to play or don’t play at all” makes that issue a lot easier to ignore in a way. Not gonna lie, I want a lite milsim game that makes zero accommodations for new/casual players, but that doesn’t make any money for the most part.