The first 2 waves are, in some ways, the hardest. After that, you have the three inter-wave bonuses you can select.
Are you familiar with how the leader droid grants different bonuses to each droid squad? Vs the dispelling droid you'll want undispellable PotencyUP on yourself, but against the TM jumping droid you'll want the option that inflicts AoE daze against them.
If you're trying to work with toons r5 and below, I agree, this raid is terrible compared to others. There simply aren't sufficient bonuses kicking in (or, alternatively, the low-tier enemies get their bonuses too early). At r7 and above, it's generally possible to predict whether you're going to have a good run as soon as the 2nd squad shows up. If the first 2 squads have difficult leader abilities, then you'll be too far behind on the Enrage timer to make it up later with the inter-wave bonuses from the space battle.
So again, I agree for tiers below r7, but if you're at r7, try to learn how different leaders affect your strategy. That allows you to forfeit an attempt early if you realize you've gotten bad RNG to start. Then learn to pick the correct inter-wave bonus for the particular enemy you're facing. While this won't always work out well (because you have to kill 2 waves before the next bonus and you don't know what the 2nd leader ability will be) it's generally okay. (The bonus TM squad doesn't prevent or reduce counterattacks, so if, for instance, you have undispellable buffs, you might just crush them quickly even though they're taking all the turns.)
There are discord servers and YouTube channels that can help you learn more than you ever thought possible about how to beat this thing. And while it certainly can feel terrible to have to do homework studying up for a game that's supposed to be fun, if you're spending 8-10 hours per raid, I guarantee you that a few hours of study now will dramatically reduce your time investment overall. You might be in net-positive territory after the first week. Certainly after 2 or 3.