This is a good rundown but misses the biggest thing, random chance.
Depending on time of day the your post will stay on page one of "new" for between 20-40 minutes. It needs about 4-6 upvotes in that time to drop onto the bottom of the homepage, and then with that a chance of more eyeballs. Some people skim page two and look for thing with a couple of votes for closer inspection, but the reality is you have that brief moment to catch attention of people who are interested in your topic.
The more high profile the item you're posting is the more likely it will catch the attention of people who are interested in the short window. More obscure topics are obviously harder to catch those initial votes.
The new page is very busy at some particular times of day. It can be a good idea to post more obscure topics in a "down time" period.
2-6pm UTC is by far the busiest time, you often see corporate posts aiming to land in new during this time, even to the point of scheduling their blog posts for this window. The payoff in traffic is worth the chance of a very brief period on page one of new.
The other thing to note is that HN is a different place at the weekend, interesting long reads do well then along with somewhat fun and silly side projects.
Also consider "Show HN" posts, they have a different ranking "gravity" and can be easer to get into the homepage, but don't necessarily stay there or as high for as long. If you are launching something, this is your best bet. They also hang around on the "show" page for days with a log tail of traffic.
Finally there is the "second chance pool" [0], I don't know the details of who or how, but some posts are flagged to be given a second chance on the bottom of the homepage. Sometimes hours or days later. A surprising proportion of top of homepage posts come from that pool - good things have a high chance of entering it.
Best advise, write what you're interested in and keep posting.
Wow, while I knew about the pool, I didn't know there was a page that actually showed it.