My English is not good enough to understand your text completely.
The thruster's tail-flame particles consist of two parts: the outer flame and inner flame. Generally speaking, the particle effect of external flame is more dazzling.
You can pick out these particles first, by using the if condition in vertex shader:
float ExistTime = EndTime - StartTime;
if (ExistTime >= 2.19 && ExistTime <= 2.21) {}
And then you can adjust the effect of these particles. For example, gl_FragColor = vec4(0.0); , which can remove the thruster outer flame particles directly.

Is there a way for you to prevent the problem of lots of propeller trails hiding 99% of what's going on when playing with missile spam?

现学现卖的lili（指

Cool
有坂野马戏的感觉