Better? With those swing wings extended, it increased the Tomcat's loiter time and maneuverability, and it reduced the landing speed for carrier landings. Swept back, it was ridiculously fast. It could break the speed of sound at sea level. Not even the F-15 can do that.
I look at it like the difference between a fancy sports car and a sedan. Sports cars have stats that sedans won’t match with speed and handling, a sedan has a nice sized trunk and four seats and it gets you from point A to point B reliably. Fancy sports cars also require tighter tolerances for their parts to run effectively, and their big selling point is that effectiveness. My gripe isn’t that sports cars aren’t cool as much as the people making the car choices are always dazzled by the cool sports cars when a sedan would do just fine.
Carrier landings are more stressful on airframes than a static airstrip and metal fatigue due to stress happens faster and requires more servicing and inspection time on a variable geometry aircraft. You can’t get around that as long as the aircraft lands conventionally. The best aircraft for the mission is never the one out of service for repairs.
The weakest, costliest, and most service-intensive part of an aircraft though isn’t the wings though, it’s the pilot. The logistics trail you save by removing that from the airframe is a much bigger savings.