the ui bar, my response to your post is here. i was on mobile at the time and couldnt respond. i was just thinking of throwing in a "reloading" and "reloaded" for centerprint but i suppose a bar would work too.
Why is the crossbow so much better than the musket? It does half as much damage but the reload time is 1/4th of the musket. The crossbow deals 2.2x more damage on average every second
My suggestion: give the musket 7-8 second load time. Single shot high damage guns should generally be slightly better than low damage fast guns because shots are riskier. Missing the first shot means you are basically dead whereas the auto gun could land 50 damage before your death. That way the slow gun is slightly more rewarding for skilled playersm
Your counter argument is probably gonna be 'but crossbow stops you from moving when reloading' but to be fair with both crossbow and musket nobody is gonna be stupid enough to reload in the open. They'll just retreat behind enemy lines where you have no way to get them. In that sense the movement speed stuff doesn't have much of a difference.
i did want to test these weapons against each other. however anything i hosted that involved both of them ended up with people using muskets 90% of the time cause they feel more powerful or whatever. or people just left :(
regarding raw numbers, its only 1/3 the reload time. i think a raw debuff to projectile speed for both crossbow and hunting bow would balance them better against the musket - right now the max speed of crossbow bolt is 175, bow 120, and musket is 200, so theres little functional difference between using a bow vs a musket. i'll also up the gravity drop on the bows. this should help differentiate the weapons to make them less objectively better.