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Admittedly, I haven't progressed far up the French BB line yet. However, I have heard reports that certain higher tier French BBs possess turtleback armor, although not to the degree of the German BBs. Does that mean one must entirely forego citadels on them (aka fight them as one would German BBs, aiming for the thinner armor belt for massive penetration damage) or can one still aim at the waterline and hope for citadels like with Conqueror and Montana? Also, as I'm still working on Normandie, I might as well ask for a quick summary on how to play the French BBs. Any guides and tips are appreciated.

German battleships are apparently these awesome brawlers; yet I can't seem to make myself do so with them; nor have I been very successful at brawling when pushing deliberately to do so. When I received Normandie in the advanced release missions, something I read somewhere recommended a full secondary build, so that's what I did; skills and modules... ...ever since, I've had no problem with brawling in Normandie; and if anything; actively seek out the oportunies to do so, despite also having read that the French battleships aren't excatly suited for such because of somewhat light amor, compared to the German brawler kings. I like the speed; manuverablity seems good, and there's plenty of secondaries. Compared to a ship like Bismark, (which I don't really like very much,) Normandie seems a breeze to use and brawl with. (For the record; I like Bayern; Normandie's contemporary; but can't make myself brawl with it...) Oh well... c'est la vie in WoWs...

Super thanks to WG. I had saved credits and XP and prepared 3 19 point captains and piled up elite captain points for a long time, looking forward to the French BBs, and WHAM got a reward. 1. The French battleships are both good and fun, for the most part. I kept Normandie which I have a sneaking fondness for, love the Lyon, hated Richeliu at first but have now like it, and just got Alsace (seems whee fun!). Great ships all. That was good work. 2. The loot handouts were excellent. Plenty of stuff in the challenges and missions. Many thanks for that. 3. The Glory of France campaign was also pretty darn good. I have a stockpile of French mission camos for grinding stuff in the future, and got a ton of useful signals. Thanks. 4. The Hermes Operation is also really good. It's possible to lose even if you make it through to the end with the Rouan undamaged because some bot DD might still hit torps. Balanced on a knife-edge, and thus, tense til the end. I've gone in there with 6 experienced division buddies and cleaned up five stars, only to do it the next game and not get a single star. That's great work by the devs. Kudos. Can't thank you all enough. Excellent job with the French BBs. Keep up the good work!

So thank you for letting us earn chances to play the Battleships early. Thank you for being able to earn the Unique Commander. And, finally, what were you thinking on Agile? The battleships are fun, and well balanced. Great job WG. Now for that pesky destroyer. Extremey hard to play. Once spotted you are very dead. I would rather see rail guns or 8.5 km torpedoes. She is fast and everything the CC's said good and bad about her. Just hope the regular French Tech Tree destroyers are not as hard to play... Seriously tier 6 in tier 8 radar.... Please at least give American smoke...

Hello Gang, I was fortunate enough to be gifted some France crates and from them I unlocked the four available French battleships. I swiftly ground out the required base XP to unlock them and wanted to try a few games with each and give some early feedback. Others may review the ships more quantitatively, but this is entirely a 'muh feels' subjective review with occasional unchecked fact or figure thrown in for effect. The ground rules are - I played the ships a bit, but not a ton After every sweeping statement read 'to me' Same captain spec was used for almost all - having to change specs is unrealistic up a line I used a 19pt captain Much beer was consumed in the playtest This review ignores 'good for the game' considerations, it is entirely selfish Bretagne - Sad, Bad and Dangerous to be Around It is almost impossible for me to separate Bretagne the ship from Bretagne the T5 matchmaking victim. The 5 games I spent in Bretagne were generally frustrating and unproductive, 4 of them were T7 MM. My first mistake was to take AR over EM, and I'd consider the turret traverse without EM basically unusable. No one likes being unable to track, having to choose between maneuvering and aiming, no one likes waiting - this is why as a society Amazon 1 hour delivery exists, well some Amazon tech would go a long way on this boat. To summarize - Samey=lamey this is an ABPXY Super(ha!)-Dreadnought which does about 21kts and has 10 guns in the 12-14in range. Sound familiar? Yeah, that'd be TX, NY, Iron Duke and Kaiser, and people complained about 12-gun Conqueror... Slow to the show and nothing to do when you get there - 21kts, well I suppose someone has to be Scharnhorst food Unrewarding guns - they're just bad in every way, no ROF like Konig, no pen like NY, no mad-fires or HE citadels like Iron Duke, just bad accuracy, pen, traverse... Low HP, though this could be a plus as at least you get to die sooner and go back to port to rethink your life. Not everyone can be the 54k HP Kongo, but 42k is just... le sigh Distributed armor scheme can be pleasantly surprising for HE resistance and autobounce, but undercut by 19mm sections and with all the cons of the scheme too Summary image - Summary - Bretagne is like her namesake Brittany when you live in southern England, same climate, not that interesting for your summer vacation, oh and there are lots of bullies, and you're the slow kid. Your classmates are going to Rome or Disneyland. Perhaps a cheap flight to Greece beckons. FXP your air miles and save yourself the trouble. How to make this ship fun - You can't. Upgrading the traverse would be a quality of life change but won't fundamentally change the equation. Bretagne is over-tiered in this form and you can't afford to be a mediocre superdreadnought at T5. Suffering's good for the soul... Normandie - Conflicted as a Frenchman in 1941 Normandie wasn't rewarding. I want a ship that when I do good things says 'WELL DONE MOFTON YOU CLEVER BOY, HERE'S A CITADEL RIBBON'. Well that's a problem in Normandie. Battleships are about guns. Normandie's guns aren't fun. Ergo, Normandie's not fun. Battleship drivers want to see large numbers pop up on screen, and Normandie is absolutely not the way to make this happen, go get a Fuso. To summarize - What's got the bow-on number of barrels as a Fuso, the dispersion of a German BB and the penetration of an Ishizuchi? That's right, Normandie! Speed is a trap to allow you to get isolated and nuked by a carrier. 27kts is pointless if you're chained within AA range of a cruiser who wants to sit behind an island. You have 12 guns which is 20% more than Bretagne but a lot of the time you see no advantage Oh the penetration, penetration gets another complaint here, and usually I don't care too much but T6 has some chunky battleships and this is insipid Dunkerque exists. Dunkerque is fun. Vulnerable to chunk damage with the armor scheme plus... shockingly, an exciting 48k HP, as always not everyone can be a 58k HP Mutsu, but any damage costs you dear and when it comes down to the wire HP are valuable Secondaries almost look good except a) they're secondaries and b) secondaries are always useless. They are pretty though, so I tried a secondary spec (mod/AFT) a little, it was just frustrating. Best results - 132 hits for 1,677 damage and 2 fires in about 4 minutes... Summary images - Summary - A battleship with bad guns. The end. How to make this ship fun - I don't know, traverse... better guns, I give up. FXP it is. Lyon - Phew Lyon is sex on screws in a way I can't even describe and which defies convention. Why is some thing beautiful, beautiful? Lyon is a joy and a departure from the line which I don't understand. In theory she's Normandie with 33% more firepower, but somehow the package translates into 333% more fun. I guess sometimes 33% more is the difference between bankrupt and happy days. My very first salvo with the ship where I derped and forgot modules, upgrades, consumables, camo - detonated a full HP Pensacola. First impressions are important. To merrily summarize - France-ica F-YEAH coming to sail the seas with 16 barreelllls yeahh T7 matchmaking, everything Bretagne has but the exact opposite What is Agincourt? Agincourt is dead to me - go back to WWI you English peasant Gun volume makes the gun system rewarding, especially rewarding DYNAMIC ammunition selection on a sub-caliber battleship. I like dynamism. Did you hear that RN BB HE spammers? Both AP power - one memorable salvo put 10 overpens into an Omaha which is still 1/3 his HP - and HE (strong fire potential and 16 guns seems to pass a fires/salvo reliability threshold) are enjoyable 8 guns in the back - actually decent firepower in one quadrant unlike Normandie, especially good for kiting Good AA allows for independent action? Need to go smash some reds up but teammates busy eating glue? No problem, run down there and do whatcha gotta do A little je ne sais quoi she stands up to the other T7 BB while being different and not OP, huzzah it's possible! Summary Image - No good ones sorry, too busy laughing in deletions. Here's my second game in the ship where I matched my 7-kills in a game record, first impressions and all that. Summary - Tres bien. (French for pretty darned good). How to make this ship fun - Click 'Battle'. Richelieu - I wanted to love you. Richelieu can best be summed up as 'a very poor T10 battleship'. Like Bretagne I can't separate the ship from the MM, if you want an objective comparison to North Carolina and co I can't really give it. Richelieu to me was defined by uptiering (7 of 8 games were T10) and enjoyment wise she up tiers particularly poorly. To writ: 15in guns when uptiered can't pen extremities on KM/USN cruisers and DM/Hindy get more games than all the other T10 CA combined, I had some costly bounce sessions High velocity guns overpen a lot, and while in the Lyon example doing overpen damage to some poor low HP Omaha is one thing, doing it to a 50k HP T9-T10 cruiser is quite another, especially with their repairs, I lost chip wars frequently The advantage of the 15in gun in pen is not realized in game thanks to autobounce and 400mm armored Yamato's all over If you're going to get few opportunities to shine accuracy is key, when a good high-tier player shows broadside you have to punish it because it's not going to happen again, Richelieu will let you down Low number of barrels and ROF make the HE-spam alternative less than productive Entire ship is 32mm plated, so Yamato and Musashi love you Kutuzov loves you too To summarize otherwise - I 'get' Richelieu, I have a ton of games in Dunkerque, it's not for bow camping, it's for flanking, it just can't at T8 and it's so, so vulnerable to incoming fire AA is 'ok' especially when combined with decent TDS, but you still get bashed by Midway's while being immune to Independence's (much skillz) and flanking is therefore penalized Speed boost is nice, I guess, when I even notice it's on, it doesn't seem worth 'saving' so I'd mostly just do it on cool down, not very exciting Miss, overpen or autobounce: pick your poison The advantage of effective firepower thanks to A-X isn't enough to offset the guns lack of output. 30s reload with a good chance of whiffed shots is frustrating, too long waiting to reload, too many misses. Neither spray'n'pray, nor a sniper rifle. Shell velocity is pretty tasty, targets get low reaction time shells get to the postcode fast Secondaries are mostly useless, I tried one game with the module and eh... The range is insane but combines poorly with dispersion, while the lack of a spotter prohibits firing-into-smoke, poor-man-DFAA or a heads-up around islands, and you feel the loss Summary Image - Damage from Yamato (no citadel's just chunk after chunk on reasonable angling) and the range on the minimap is almost deceptive, you see a cruiser half way into your range and then realize he's still 17km out, and angled, and autobounces you... Summary - Not quite enough. How to make this ship fun - Gascogne was always going to be worse than Richelieu due to gun arrangement, but WG have improved her sigma and the repair cooldown in recent tests. While Gascogne will need more 'soft buffs', Richelieu could get on that bandwagon to a lesser extent, a 28s reload might not be much in absolute terms but it's psychologically nice to have, or 1.9 sigma. Something to address the guns. Shooting guns is fun.

Somewhat tounge-in-cheek here; but what is with the older British and French battleship designs? I look at Bretange, and Hood for example; and I see these huge, towering superimposed main battery turrets, and can't help but think they seem to just be absolutely BEGGING for a barbette citadel... ...maybe I've been shooting at battleships too much in WoWs... A somewhat comparable USN, Texas, doesn't seem to look as tall. the more modern Iowa's certainly don't seem that way, nor do the KGVs,; but then the RN goes back to the 'OH SHOOT ME!" crazy-tall superimposed barbette on Vanguard? Da heck?

I am wondering how the French BBs are as far as main gun effectiveness? Are they close range to mid range only or can they handle long range fire as well? Also are they the typical BB that you mainly use AP for the guns or do they require a lot of HE use like the British BBs? Also how are the secondary and AA guns doing? Nothing in the WOWs Wiki yet so we are in uncharted territory at the moment as far as the French main line BBs... Might as well ask about how effective the armor profiles are on them as well I guess lol.

1.) From realistic point of view, even when this old design would be as heavily refitted as wg imagined, i simply cant believe she would ever able to reach 30 knots. We can compare her to Giulio Cesare which has the exact same dimensions and went through the most extended refit possible for that old hull - still italians were able to squeeze only 27 knots from it 28 at best. And those 115 000 horsepower wg gave to the Normandie, how can you fit it in her? Again italians were able to fit only 75 000 into Cesare and they even removed the middle turret for more space 2.) Dunkerque. What i really cant stand is that Normandie will be as fast as Dunkerque. This is simply wrong not just from realistic point of view but from balance point as well. Now Dunkerque is straight up worse. So, i think Normadie's speed should be reduced at least by 2 knots. That still would be enough for the competition and she still will be the second fastest BB on the tier with Dunkerque being the fastest - as it should be. EDIT: i had no idea what WG did with the Normandie (read below). she is literally screwed beyond repair. throw her away

No French battleships available or Vive la France campaign. Reloaded Public Test with the same result. I can see that some players have them, special testers? If so why offer a day of premium to play them when not all can?

New video has been spotted on Youtube about French Battleships. In it, we learn the background on the Tier X Battleships. Also the Port of Marseille will be included in the game.