Thank you! I'm glad that the effects I was going for payed off. I tried to make the combat feel as polished as I could (the parallax, the background particles, the animated thrusters, the bullets exploding on hit, the different sounds for hitting the hull and the subsystems, the muzzle flashes, the slightly animated health bars, etc.) rather than adding more fights, and I definitely think that was the right decision.
Destroying your previous ships was exactly what I wanted people to do when playing. It plays into the lore of an AI unhappy with their tiny spaceship body. I like to image the Toy Story "I don't want to play with you anymore meme" for it.