Trying to script phaser fire similar to star trek. Continuous beam that can be moved as it fires. Not even sure were to start with this. Graphics definitely not my strong point. Can anybody point me in the right direction?
Do a Physics.Raycast, have a LineRenderer, and set its points to the origin and raycastHit.point. (Make sure the LineRenderer is set to use World space) Hopefully that can at least give you enough of the right keywords to search for - if you have more specific questions on how to implement these feel free to ask.
If you want something fancier I would learn how to use shaders, it’s then just a matter of making the beams thin enough and ‘particle like’ to act like Star trek phasers. Nothing wrong with the line renderer method but I would argue it’s a bit limited for the effect you’d want.
LineRenderer as suggested by StarManta is probably easiest. But this may look a bit “dull”. You can also try to animate it or use a custom mesh (for example a very long and thin cylinder). The AngryBots demo had a really nice animated laser effect (the targeting laser pojnter). The demo is a few years old so it may not even run inside Unity today but it should give you a start.
As the StarTrek phaser looks like a particle beam using a particle system may yield better results for you. But it will be difficult to “stop” the particles at the target. This probably involves manual iterating over the particles.
As a last tip: Don’t reinvent the wheel. There are many laser and beam weapon effects on the Asset Store. Maybe even some free ones (don’t know, just an assumption). So use one of them and adjust it to your needs may be the easiest solution.