there are always unquantifiable variables. usually things with nonlinearity or randomness involved (like weapons with spread or dice roll jams). sometimes its not as obvious as that (ppfld is a good example) they tend to throw a monkey wrench into your math. you usually have to use testing to come up with fudge factors to compensate for those. and those are very fragile in lieu of changes.
id say balance everything first using your formulae.
determine which have known unquantifiable variables.
verify that the others do not have any hidden (non-obvious) unquantifiable variables.
do a comparative analysis in a real world test, use the difference in result to compute fudge factors.
apply fudge factors and then retest.
repeat last 2 steps until balance is obtained.
if you make broad changes to the quantifiable things, you just changed the baseline and need to re-determine all your fudge factors.
if you make small changes to the unquantifiable, you can re determine their fudge factors in isolation.
this can also be done with quantifiables but without the fudge factor step, so long as they are of equivalent performance to other quantifiables.
use deterministic mechanics whenever possible. it makes things easier to quantify.
the player is the biggest unquantifiable of all and will break your game more than any bug will.
Edited by LordNothing, 19 January 2022 - 01:01 PM.