I thought I drop this here again
I still thin the fire rateis what makes the unit ultimately really bad. Over kill, slow new zaregt acquisition. If you match 40 arbs vs 40 hc the arbs will shoot fast and kill kill kill, the HC have high damage but it doesn’t matter in high number engagement anyway so they just kill too slow.
The proposed matchlock tech is a weaker version of the Spanish attackspeed bonus.
Alternately I would not mind if all hand cannons just got baseline faster attackspeed. Like everyone gets almost Spanish Hand cannons and Spanish ones bet even a bit faster. Spanish weren’t op so buffing them slightly more won’t break them either, and baseline ones closer to Spanish ones would not be broken op neither.