Thanks! This was definitely helpful. If I continue working on this I'll see what I can do about making the enemies more engaging.
Since you mentioned quotas, Starfox64 had an informal quota system, whereby you'd be locked out of certain paths if you didn't get a high enough score but could still beat the game. Of course that would be a bit much to implement in a short game jam since I'd need enough levels to justify paths, but I guess there's no limits on what I can do with this now.
Maybe killing enemies with their weapons could increase weapon stability?
And the level design was definitely a pain point during development. The system I made doesn't actually let me see the levels until I play them (which sounds stupid, but there was a long list of reasons for building a system like this). So from my perspective the levels just look like this right now. Hopefully this is something I can fix, since otherwise proper level design will take forever.