Should I use attack effect collision to detect when damage is dealt? [closed]

Question

I am wondering what a common way for actually dealing damage to different units is. Imagine a game like starcraft for example, should damage be done like this:

1) zealot attacks zergling, deal damage to zergling

or

2) zealot attacks zergling, create an attack effect on zergling. When this effect collides with the zergling deal damage to said zergling.

The advantage of 2 is for projectiles (like a dragoon attack) will deal damage when the attack collides with the target unit.

What are your thoughts about this in general? Are there other ways of doing this?

Answer 1

I would recommend not to use particles or any FX related element to check collisions, as these can be very unreliable. I would recommend to either check the collision using hotboxes on the characters themselves, or define a basic mesh in the general shape of the attack animation to check the collsion with the attack effect. Hopefully that helps :)