Thanks for the detailed and encouraging feedback, we really appreciate it :) Awesome to hear that you had fun strategizing and customizing your ship. We are currently discussing taking this game forward post-jam, so all of the suggestions/feedback are super helpful! A 2-player mode and making the battle process a bit more "smooth" are definitely something we will look into.
Also, thanks for pointing out the softlock - I think during the (time-sensitive) development, none of us thought about the scenario of not having a single laser in the ship! That's a super interesting strategic decision and we should definitely fix this bug to allow for creative strategies like this :)