more appropriate weapon fire than particles?

I'm creating a weapon that behaves like most classic shmup default weapons. High rate of fire with enough "bullets" to basically constitute a stream of munition. As I figured that would be quite a chore and a drag on the engine if I were to create and instantiate a basic collider type object, I implemented the prototype with a particle emitter and world collider.
Now, based on my lack of ability to get hit locations etc etc from bullets that hit enemies via the OnParticleCollision method, I've started to wonder if this was the best tactic. I don't really need specific hit locations, but the general area of effect would be nice.
Any advice on this sort of weapon?
Also, in so far as determining the amount of damage it's been hardcoded into the enemy for now until I sat down to play with ways in which I can determine the "cost" of the bullet. I assume that a variable on the weapon emitter is one way, but is that efficient enough? How well would that work if this was a two player networked game? And I guess a part of that question would be: "How reliable would particle based weapon fire be in a networked game, compared to an instanced collider based weapon"?

Thanks!