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I find many players look at firepower and close combat lethality when selecting their armies. If that is all you do when selecting an army, you can be rudely awakened in a battle because you failed to do what? Include the survivability of a troop or vehicle for that matter.

I am not posting the excel spreadsheet I used to do all the math but suffice it to say, I tried to take into account generally the percentage of facing what army and what strength weapons you will see in a battle and then finally used this to rate their survivability based on the volume of fire you will see in an average tournament.
Think of it this way, if an average mix of weapons fires at you, what is the survival chance of the unit you selected. This is by no means a comprehensive list but it may help you value your own units and the survivability of an opponents unit to your fire. The final part is rating the survivability to the base cost you need to pay to get that survival rating.

Imperial Guard Survival 1.58 Value .263
Tau Firewarrior Survival 2.44 Value .244
Orc Boy Survival 1.80 Value .301
Marine Scout Survival 3.28 Value .253
Tactical Marine Survival 4.84 Value .323
Terminator Survival 9.97 Value .249
Plague Marine Survival 14.12 Value .614
Wraithguard Survival 13.16 Value .376
Talos Survival 16.93 Value .508
Carnifex 2+/W4/T7 Survival 28.76 Value .920
Wraithlord Survival 68.93 Value 2.06

Remember, this is rated based on average lethality of firepower you will face from all your opponents. But it is a good basis to judge on how well it will hold up. But this is not a rating ofhow all of these stand up to say 10 firedragons... rather the average of fire dragons that would show up in a tournament and all the stuff your opponents can unload on you.

The other thing this should help to illustrate is value versus cost. That terminator is worth more than 5 ork boyz but when you look at it from a survival point of view, a terminator is THE worst buy on the list for what you pay for it. Of course this isn't taking into account their ability to deal out damage but when you total up what you have on the board, you are at a severe disadvantage versus say what it costs you to put out tactical marines.

If you were purpose building against one opponent, these ratings would be skewed. Also it does not take into account the value of the general and how you play them. Aggressive play will lower survivability, defensive play or positioning will improve any units' survival.

Finally a word about value, this is pure survivability as it is not taking into account the weapons load outs. For example, I like a brightlance and EML on my wraithlord...
My kitted out WL is survival still 68.93 but the value drops to 1.334

dont know how useful these could be ,seems only a pack of numbers to me.

Without any sort of data, this is just a pile of numbers that we already have a basic understanding for. Terminator more survivable than Imperial Guardsman? Knew that. Wraithlord more survivable than Marine Scout? Knew that.

You could replace the numbers with colors and it'd be about as useful.

Okay say you are building a chaos army and debating do field 8 terminators or 10 Death Guard.

240 points for the 8 chaos terminators
230 points for the 10 death guard marines...

From a survival point of view, you are looking
at about 80 worth out of the terminators and 140 worth for those plague marines. Survival wise you should go with the plague marines as they will take more of a licking and keep on ticking than the termies...

From a survivability standpoint, sure.

What about from a lethality standpoint?

I agree from experience, we all know that. It is trying to put a value on it. The GW point costs are not a pure value of the troop to be playing it so we all make judgements.

This is intuitive and second nature to a long time player but it can seem like rocket science to new players.

So I do apologize as it is of little value to long time players but I do hope a little helpful to the kid who is still struggling with army composition.

Hey... could you please explain how you got those numbers? I know that you said you used an "average mix of weapons", but what does that mean?

The numbers look pretty solid, but when you're accounting for the variables in enemy weaponry, that mostly depends on very abstract mathematics. The numbers look good, and I think I know how you got them, I just want to better understand... i guess

sparowl wrote:From a survivability standpoint, sure.

What about from a lethality standpoint?

You are absolutely right, this is only one side of the coin.

Well, I can do the math on lethality but it seems to me most people figure that out pretty well themselves.
If you need help figuring out which is better a striking scorpion or a howling banshee or is this unit of
scouts better off with a shotgun or pistol and CCW. A lot of that comes down to personal style and preference.
And to a point very subjective. Get 10 marines in HTH with 10 scorpions with an exarch and a biting blade. Now put that up against 10 howling banshees with the marines doomed... which is better? Which is better a fire dragon against a terminator or a howling banshee?

Take it to the next level, where it isn't always a clear choice. Should I fleet my gaunts and do more in HTH against this unit or should I shoot and let my opponent charge me?

What I see is a lot of new players remembering that one perfect assault where their banshees cleaned up on a unit of terminators
but they don't take into account why it only seems to do that once in awhile.

I look at firepower/melee lethality as the optimist view. Survival as a bit pessimistic. It is the combination of the two that makes for a realists view of what works and how to play them. Add the third and fourth mobility and flexibility and then finally execution. To me the greatest is execution but that is the knowledge and ability of the player. An army of all tactical marines is very mundane but if a general can execute his battle plan well, he might make it a viable force where someone else would just flounder. On paper it sucks but a good player just might be able to make it work. A great paper list might be awesome in theory but you still have to make it execute a plan to make it work.

For instance the whole issue of sternguard that has been floating around. Good lethality and flexibility but you are overall giving up some survivability. So rather than remember the one game where you cleaned up on whole firing line of tau firewarriors... Maybe think about how to mitigate that survivability downside. Hmmm what if I want to firing line them and rather than sticking them out in front, I put them behind a line of cheap tacticals. Suddenly they are getting a 4+ invulnerable and they are surviving plasma shots being lobbed at them instead of dying at the same rate as my less capable tacticals. If I play them that way maybe I just reduce their overall
lethality and use the rounds that ignore cover saves and just save that AP3 get hot stuff for when those CSMs get up close and personal and then I will step them in front and blast away.

These ARE just numbers unless you think critically how you can offset that cost in your play. A prime example was the 4th ed Falcon,
with holofields and spirit stones. Why did eldar play them? For their lethality? No, it was survival and mobility. They usually spent whole games being unable to fire but often they survived games where landraiders would long be slag heaps. Then they would unload some squad of doom on you at an opportune time and that was their value.