Combat system design help: lasers/instant damage

My partner(s) want(s) me to code for lasers in the combat system we're working on. the only way I can see this conceptually is just having it as a different colored bullet (and different damage type) than the actual bullets we're using.

this is probably the most common way of creating them, but we're also talking about including a weapon or two that has zero shot to closure time (instantly hits what's targetted when fired). I know that having a zero shot-to-closure time is impossible relying on actual physical bullets so I was wondering what ways people have gone about including this type of weapon in their system.


The current working idea I have is have the combat HUD broadcast the attacker's rotation and position on a data channel, and the "victim's" HUD would calculate if the shot that was fired was a hit or a miss.

You might want to take a look at this post; I am in the middle of creating a similar physicsless combat system, and the people who responded were extremely helpful:

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thanks for the link, a lot of good theory is in there