Hi Wayne, to my ear the hats still sound as even as they do in your track.
You can afford to be heavy handed with the effect if you want to make the pumping audible.
To demonstrate, I've done a high pass of the Civ hat test 2.mp3 just to isolate the hats a bit
(which creates a whole bunch of ugly phasing when recombined with a low pass of the original)
I triggered the sidechain compression on every quarter note to get the "hats track" to duck then swell back.
You'll be able to apply this a bit more cleanly to the actual hats track in your multitrack mix.
Synthwave tends to have this kick triggered pumping applied to the "everything but the kick" buss, so you might like to take it further, but I was only suggesting it to create a bit more groove in the drum track.
Every sound design choice is an artistic one, sidechaining is just a tool to be used as narrowly or broadly as you like.
Settings I used for Fruity Limiter (hats highpass track only); Threshold -60dB (infinity), Ratio 5:1, Attack 0ms, Release 350ms, Curve 1
I also narrowed the stereo field by 60% since the snare verb is really wide, the genre doesn't usually have such big sounding 80's drums.
However, listening again to the full track, narrower drums may not compete with the rest of the mix width. They fit the width context just fine.
You could also lose some top end niceness off the drums and let them be more gritty - think 8 bit Atari or Pollard Syndrum FM synthesis (in both cases)
I did so on the drums buss with Effector [Lo-Fi] to get a little 8 bit grit in there, and another Effector [Filter] to lose a little top end
Obviously taking top off your drums has a knock on effect to the rest of your mix... so I'd (gently -3dB above 3.5kHz) low pass everything except the vox and lead synth.
That'll let those two instruments really pop.
View attachment Civ hats suggested sidechain.mp3