Turning off vars when rays stop hitting, & Help with code structure: If in update or While statement

Physics
1

First project, first big roadblock:

So I have units of different colors that all constantly shoot lasers unless they are getting damaged by enemies. While unit A shoots unit B, unit B’s laser changes color. Once unit B is no longer getting shot it changes back to its original color.

Everything works fine except for when unit A’s ray is no longer hitting unit B. (If I turn them off manually in the editor it works)

I can’t turn off the hittingPlayer variable of the unit shooting the laser because there is no way to get out of the else if once I make it true. Maybe there is a better way(hittingPlayer is just there so the laser colors only get added once)

I also can’t turn off the variable on the unit being hit because I was using the Raycast hit to turn it on.

Right now I have this all in Update()
I feel like I need to split some of it up and have like a while(hittingPlayer) loop going in a coroutine or something like that to make it work. Other ways I have thought about solving it have me shooting twice as many rays which I don’t want to do.

if(damaged == false)  //If you aren't taking damage shoot your laser

        {
            line.enabled = true;
            Ray ray = new Ray(transform.position, transform.forward);
            RaycastHit hit;
         
            line.SetPosition(0, ray.origin);
         
            if (Physics.Raycast (ray, out hit, 30))
            {
                line.SetPosition(1, hit.point);


                if(hit.collider.tag == "Player" && hittingPlayer == false)
                {

                    hit.transform.GetComponentInChildren<Laser>().gettingHit = true;
                    hit.transform.GetComponentInChildren<Laser>().tempShipColor = tempShipColor + hit.transform.GetComponentInChildren<Laser>().tempShipColor;
                    hittingPlayer = true;
                     
                }
                else if(hit.collider.tag == "Player" && hittingPlayer == true)
                {
                    Debug.Log ("Yay!");

                }
         
                else if(hit.collider.tag == "Enemy")
                {
                    Debug.Log("Ouch!");
                }

                else     //never gets here because of the previous statements
                {
                    hittingPlayer = false;
                    hit.transform.GetComponentInChildren<Laser>().gettingHit = false;
                    Debug.Log("It Works!");
                }
            }
            else
                line.SetPosition(1, ray.GetPoint(30));
             
                hit.transform.GetComponentInChildren<Laser>().gettingHit = false;
               //this causes an error since it is not hitting it anymore, but I feel like if I had something that would do
              //the equivalent here it would work. Is this the kind of thing you use SendMessage for?


        }
        else
        line.enabled = false;

So really I’m just not sure how to turn something off when it isn’t being hit by the raycast anymore and would just like general advice on how to structure this.

2

Use a bool to record if a player has been hit. Check the bool to see if the player has been hit. Reset the bool at the end of the frame.

You probably want a manager script to control this. Consider using events for each ‘tick’ you need.