I agree, the VDP sprite managemet is crap.
What about the EC bit?
That bloody EC makes me to rewrite the color definitions
each time the sprite enter the screen!!
What a waste of CPU time, of memory and of mental resources to manage it!!!

Preparing to be banished:

Some time ago I saw a technician article about the VIC II, commodore video chip, which have very complete information. Each one of its 8 sprites have in the VIC registers 8 bits to only indicate which sprite collide with each other!

Don't is neccessary any colision detecction mechanism. Only read and interpreter the registers.

Each sprite have a bit to indicate colision with background too.

Each sprite can be magnified in X or Y, indepently.

It's possible to define if the sprite will be in front or back of some graphics bit patterns.

In sprite management, this VDP was an important one to know.

See the article in http://www.minet.uni-jena.de/~andreasg/c64/vic_artikel/vic_article_1.htm.

Claiming for pardon:
I don't have a Commodore 64. I have seen one only once, in the 90's. Your graphics were crap to me in that time, but I was amazed with the sprite management when I see one shoot'em'up.