So, title, but here is what I want to accomplish. I want to have a ship that when you are applying thrust, will leave a trail (currently using a Line Renderer) that stays behind the ship, but when you are not thrusting (but still coasting) I want the ship to stop drawing the trail but not deleting the trail segments that are already on the screen.

I know setting time to 0 will disable it (or delete it if you have autodestruct enabled as I found out after 20 minutes of frustration) but that will immediately remove all the existing trails from the scene. I'm beginning to think it's just not possible and I'd have to roll my own system to emit particles that decay over time on their own.

-Side note: This is a learning project I'm doing with my son so I don't really want to purchase any assets if I can avoid it, though if they are cheap enough and can be useful in many areas I might consider it.