Raycast Only Hits an Object if the Previous Raycast hits the Object

Questions & Answers
1

I’ve been working on implementing a shotgun spread into a game using raycasts. The issue is that the subsequent raycasts only “hit” the object when the first raycast also “hits” that object. So, if only the lower pellet of the shot hits the target, it will not deal any damage. However if the the middle pellet also hits it along with the lower pellet it will deal the damage of both pellets as intended.
Here’s the relevant code for it:

public GameObject maincam;
    public int damage = 10;
    public float spreadT;
    private BasicCombat combatinst1;
    private BasicCombat combatinst2;
    private BasicCombat combatinst3;

    RaycastHit hit1;
    RaycastHit hit2;
    RaycastHit hit3;

    void FixedUpdate()
    {
        ShotgunAttack(damage, spreadT);

    }

    void ShotgunAttack(float damageT, float spread)
    {
        if (Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0))
        {
            //original
            if (Physics.Raycast(maincam.transform.position, maincam.transform.forward, out hit1, 100) == true)
            {
                combatinst1 = hit1.collider.gameObject.GetComponent<BasicCombat>();
                combatinst1.health -= damageT;
            }

            //spread below
            if (Physics.Raycast(maincam.transform.position, maincam.transform.forward + (-maincam.transform.up * spread), out hit2, 100) == true)
            {
                combatinst2 = hit2.collider.gameObject.GetComponent<BasicCombat>();
                combatinst2.health -= damageT;
            }

            //spread above
            if (Physics.Raycast(maincam.transform.position, maincam.transform.forward + (maincam.transform.up * spread), out hit3, 100) == true)
            {
                combatinst3 = hit3.collider.gameObject.GetComponent<BasicCombat>();
                combatinst3.health -= damageT;
                print(hit3.collider.gameObject);
            }
        }
    }

Got any ideas?

2

I’ve managed to find the problem, when the raycast hits an object with out the BasicCombat script attached it returns null, and it can’t set the combatinst variable which seems to break the entire IF function. Adding a check to see if the script exists on the hit gameobject seems to resolve this issue.