The titular Layered Modifiers are as much of a balancing method as they are a way of structuring and thinking about your data. It is a powerful and highly scalable approach that can help you manage huge amounts of content and variables.
Case in point, I have used this method in a mobile strategy game called Transformers: Earth Wars to establish and maintain balance with over 20,000 building and character variants. In terms of combat balancing alone, our data spreadsheets were in control of:
- 9 defensive buildings (with up to 15 upgrade levels)
- 13 utility and production buildings (with up to 15 upgrade levels)
- 6 Combiners (super-units composed of 5-6 other robots; each Combiner had 2 upgrade versions and 10 to 20 power levels) ...
