They aren't a western twist on the anime battleship like someone combined gundam with star trek, they aren't industrial rigs or toy rocketships. Without interesting wargadgets to try out it's no surprise that no one plays aerotech

I'm sure the mercenaries of the galaxy would love to zoom around in a star trek ship, photon torpedoing anything they can't steal and them beaming down giant robots onto the planet's surface completely ignoring silly things like "prime directive", but alas that is not battletech