And that's an even worse point about them! It is still a broken weapon in both player hands and AI control. And that means only a handful of ships are viable for the player against that weapon. And it incentive that AI baiting and kiting playstyle Alex is trying to make less viable. And the single best fleet possible by a wide margin is to spam them on Vigilances/Ventures.
The fleet building tournament clearly showed that only very specialized loadouts can counter a sabot spam, and those loadouts can't do much anything else. Since the AI fleets won't have those fleets, as a player it's just a "I win the game" button.