And i recommend this tutorial here. There are a lot of "production" tricks in there. https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/zn2N/tutorial-realistic-game-assets?utm_source=artstation&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_term=marketplace
Yah, agreed. And from personal experience dependent upon optimised edge flow or indeed segment count, boolean operands needn't be an absolute chore to efficiently implement, only practice, practice then more practice will enable a progressive fluent competency via perseverance over time, as others alluded too earlier…
No easy way around that. There are some tips and tricks for topology you can learn from Arrimus 3d on youtube and other tutorials. You can model everything you want on Maya, if you are searching for an "easier" tool then i guess you would be disappointed. You could try sculpting but it is definitely harder. You could try…