Revisited this giant air carrier design. Worked out all of the animations, attack patterns, projectiles, and damage states. Well, at least it's a draft concept for the behavior, but there's always further nuance and iteration involved when put into practice. Looks pretty intense when you see all the attack patterns together, but it will slowly enter the screen so you wont't be dealing with all of this at once. The hangar door will open when it comes on screen, and launch several kamikaze ships. Oh, and this is only a miniboss of the first level!
The red and orange colors is a natural fit for the smoldering craters, so I think maybe that's the way to go with the explosions as well. Red invokes the appropriate primal emotion, and the bright white explosions we started with may end up causing seizures. Ultimately, readability of projectiles is the most important, so we'll have to see about that.
Also, made a new enemy unit design, the Death Swan. This is oriented upwards and has turning animation, so it can swoop in from the sides of the screen, and dump clusters of targeted bullets at you.
Lots more cooking. Stay tuned!