10 OCT 2020:
Cruisers now give a little bit of warning before firing their lasers. I think the animation turned out really well!
When the "pincers" are open it reminds me of this Toe Biter I took a picture of during one of my Iraq deployments:
(Fun side note: You would not believe the bugs in Iraq. They're all HUGE! Camel spiders the size of your hand. Ugly mole crickets. Toe-Biters the size of soda cans . . . )
I'm still adjusting the Cruiser firing animations and behavior but I feel it's definitely on the right track.
Then later this week I found a rookie mistake I was making. I corrected it and ended up reducing my code by 200 lines. Woot!