home pod mini volume control is out of control

I have several problems with VOLUME on homepod minis that I just cannot seem to resolve.

1) I want siri to SPEAK AT 100% VOLUME EVERY TIME. So far I can only find three settings: siri volume follows media volume; siri volume adjusts to room tone volume (hidden in Home/homepod Accessory Details/bottom of scrolldown gear icon/Accessibility/VOICE FEEDBACK/Automatically Adjust Siri Volume); start every siri request with a pre-request "hey siri speak at 100%!.... YES! YES I AM SURE!! YES!" repeat X times until I give siri the right answer she's looking for to a demand that I cannot hear because she's not speaking at 100%. FML The middle option would be fine, except that it's always noisiest where *I* am, not where homepod is, so it never decides to speak up so I can hear it over the (dishwasher, vent fan, sink, etc.) ALWAYS speaking at 100% would JustWork®, but even when I explicitly tell siri to "ALWAYS speak at 100%," and jump through the thirteen dozen hoops to manage to get it to accept that that is really, truly, yes indeed, it IS what I want, it will revert to either tracking room tone or media volume at some point, which means it's inaudible.

2) I have several homeapp scenes with volume changes, but ever since cancelling AppleMusic siri and homepods absolutely refuse to respect my scene volume changes. I removed all applemusic playlists and other AppleMUSIC stuff, and even disabled the whole audio section, then rebuilt it from scratch to ONLY ADJUST VOLUME, but this one setting consistently breaks every scene! Homepod responds "I tried, but the media in your scene is not available." WTF? There is *no media*, just a volume change setting. Is this just Apple screwing us for not paying the ever-increasing AppleMusicTax every month just to enable a feature that's ostensibly present in the $150 device we already bought, but has now been capriciously taken away? I'm pretty sure this worked when I first got the homepods.