Engine Trail Advice

So I've been tinkering around with my engine trail for a while and am just not happy with it. This is a 2D setup, looking down from Z.... the ship is a rigidbody which uses a thrust/rotate control. The particles are emitted whenever the thruster is engaged (up arrow).

My current Engine Trail is a Particle System. What I don't like about it is when turning (while moving), the trail will appear through the ship due to the physics, until we overcome the momentum.

I am also not pleased with how dim the engine looks, but I am just using basic colors for the particles.

Anyone have advice on how to improve on this engine trail? Thanks

If you want the engine to be brighter, I would suggest changing the shader the particles are using to an additive particle shader. It should allow an inherent overblown brightness effect as long as the input color is light enough. I'm guessing you're using a standard diffuse shader right now, which probably looks pretty bad. :)

My current Engine Trail is a Particle System. What I don't like about it is when turning (while moving), the trail will appear through the ship due to the physics, until we overcome the momentum.

Are your particles moving? I can't see turning being much of a problem as long as the particle velocity is always firing particles behind the ship. If the problem is that particles are clipping the ship and looking bad, you can always add particle collision to your emitter and a collider to your ship.