Bob Hawkes taught me a rule of thumb years ago 1/3 of a test should be recall/regurgitation (low cognitive load), 1/3 should be short answer/ simple application (medium cognitive load) and 1/3 should be high level application (multi-step, or multi concept) - High cognitive load. This rule was used on all first Year Physics test/exams at the time. If you trust your students are doing the reading, and following along you might ditch the first third and make shorter tests that only cover the medium and high cognitive load questions.

Does Mount A have automatic exam grading software yet? I haven't used it myself, but I've heard that if can be scarily good, and reading an essay to double check an automatic mark is appropriate is a lot simpler than reading it and marking it yourself.

I've been in "Contract graded" courses - where if you do all the assignments adequately you get an A, most assignemtns get a B, Core assignemtns get a C, and nothing gets a fail - + and - assigned by prof based on class work/whim. Every assignment get marked pass fail, and if you do the required ones you get the mark. This can work quite well.