Thanks for playing, and for streaming it as well (I just watched your VOD this morning)! I think your feedback is very accurate, and probably a perfect example of the kind of issues I might have avoided if I had scoped the game a bit better. If I continue to update this after the jam, I'll for sure make the bullets larger. There is a repeatable research option to make the bullets go faster as well.
The strategic layer is a bit faster than I'd originally intended because I know in a jam people only play a few minutes, so I wanted to be sure they experienced the full system flow, but fwiw there is actually a pause button in the corner of the map (I should have called that out in the game or made it more apparent, I think).
Also regarding your confusion about the mission scoring, it's mostly based on your momentum and combo chaining. The more momentum you have when you kill an enemy or pick up a power-up, the higher a score you get from it.