The spam ships are really, really random >.>
And for some reason, I can't even perfect the red spaceship, the very first part in particular.
Those are the two hardest parts of the stage. For the green ships, the essential thing to make it manageable with A-L is to only tackle one side of the screen at a time (and to take out green ships with shot most of the time). Take out all the green ships on the side of the current bullet cancel ship, destroy that, and laser (better for this than shot so you can hit ships below/to the sides) your way over to the other side before they begin firing again. Repeat for that side, etc. For the final wave of them you do the same thing, except you just plain don't bother with the other side - just destroy the ones on the right and go high up on the screen so the rest can't hit you.
For the first part of the red ship, you want to be sweeping and streaming back and forth with shot until the two turret things appear;
immediately be ready to laser the first one and destroy it before popcorn enemy shots get you. From there you can either stream the popcorns until they're all dead, and then take out the turret, or try and get the turret ASAP and kill the rest of the popcorns. Either works.
Consistency comes with practice.
...Also, the stage 3 extend is from destroying the six orange side boxes and then the hull thing at the end, without using an area bomb for any of the destruction. Laserbombs are fine. :V DDP only displays up to four reserve lives, so you pretty much just need to trust that you picked it up if you're scoring well by that point.
