French M36b2

[Brian Bezdicek]

Inconclusion, the recent changes of BR and rate of fire and the addition of new tanks finally make the BR 1.0-2.7 French tanks definitely playable and actually result in a truly excellent line-up at BR 2.0-2.7.

No more excuse not to develop your French ground tree!

This BR range has seen quite a few additions since the introduction of French tanks and I now consider that the French line-up at BR 3.7-4.0 is one of the very best in the game in AB and RB (with that of Russia and Sweden)!

Indeed, the M4A4 (SA50), now at BR 5.0, despite its historically justified reduction of frontal armor, is an excellent tank shooting deadly APCBC shells with a massive 202mm penetration and featuring a nice -10 gun depression.

The decent ARL-44 (BR 5.3; a heavy tank strangely treated as an SPG in-game) brings a bit more of armor to the French line-up. It is not very fast but is reasonably agile, although it suffers from a bad suspension and a mediocre reload.

Featuring the same gun/shell and even more fragile than the Panhard AML-90 (see below), but with an inferior mobility, a limited turret rotation, and unable to scout, the ELC bis at BR 6.0 (after being absurdly introduced at BR 6.7) is a very mediocre addition to the French tech tree.

The CA Lorraine at BR 5.7/6.0 in AB/RB is a very mobile (in fact, too mobile in AB, being hard to control for aiming) but weakly armored straight-shooter SPG with a long reloading time of 11s (Expert crew; 100mm gun without an autoloader; see below). I find it completely useless in AB, but decent in RB.

The American M36B2 at BR 5.7 is a useful addition in a BR range including only a very few tanks, and is a good open-top SPG featuring the excellent M82 APCBC and a very decent HEAT-FS to fight heavy targets.

This BR range features an extremely competitive and fun line-up, if you can appreciate extremely mobile tanks with little armor and a good autoloaded gun (the ultimate tanks for active players, the ones who won the battles).

The premium version of the AMX-30 loses the great 20mm gun of the regular model (very useful to kill light targets or even planes, or to eliminate obstacles before firing the HEAT shell), and is hence a dubious buy at its current price.

In fact, the premium SOMUA SM heavy tank at BR 7.7 is a much better buy, and brings some relevant armor to this light French line-up, featuring the same autoloaded gun as the Lorraine 40t (4s reload but now with 8 shells in the autoloader). It is slower than its lighter companions, but remains actually very agile, even in RB. I really like it a lot and consider that it is currently the best non-event French premium tank!

The AMX-30 ACRA prototype at BR 8.3 fires powerful missiles (but at a relatively slow rate) and may be more effective in RB than in AB. I am not really a fan of this kind of tanks that cannot be played too aggressively, although I am slowly starting to enjoy it.

The MARS 15 (BR 8.3; developed around 1990) was a brief and unsuccessful attempt at replacing the AMX-13. In the game, it features an APFSDS inferior (271mm penetration) to that of the AMX-10RC and shares its scouting ability. Also featuring a good mobility and fast reload (but no autoloader), this tank is barely decent, shines at nothing in particular, and does not even offer a new type of gameplay. It is hence a bit redundant in a French line-up in this BR change.

The VAB Mephisto (see picture just above) at BR 8.7 fires 4 excellent HOT-2 ATGM (900mm penetration) without delay and features a great animation of the reasonably fast automatic reload procedure of the 4 missiles (it only carries a total of 4x3=12 missiles). The missiles are launched from high enough, which can be interesting if one stands behind a hill. The mobility of the wheeled VAB Mephisto is also pretty good. On the downside, the vehicle has not much armor and lacks an MG for destroying bushes or to defend from CAS. All in all, and despite this kind of vehicle not being my cup of tea, I find it pretty decent and strangely pleasant and fun to play.

Finally, the AMX-30 Roland, all alone at BR 10.0, is a capable AA firing missiles (they can also destroy light ground vehicles). Yet, lacking a gun, it is certainly not as good as the Russian Tunguska or the American ADATS.

It is supplemented by the SAM ItO 90M at BR 11.7, featuring a Finnish chassis equipped with the French Crotale NG (New Generation) missile/system (a vehicle that I will probably never spade).

As for the AMX-30 at BR 8.0, it lacks the great and very useful 20mm gun of the 1972 model already in the French tree, and is hence a very dubious choice at its current price and BR (except, of course, for faster grinding and for collectors).

In particular, because of this slow secondary reload, I generally advise carrying just a few more or as many shells as the autoloader can accommodate, which will also greatly improve the survivability of your autoloading tanks, by reducing or even eliminating the shells stored in the hull: carry around 15-18 shells for 7-round autoloaders, no more than 23 shells for 12-round autoloaders, and exactly 20/23 shells for the comfortable 19/22-round autoloaders of the AMX-50 Surbaiss/Leclerc (you may carry 2 more shells on the Leclerc in case you lose your ammo burning in the blowout panel).

Note that the gunner can be on the right or on the left side (when facing the tank), a crucial information to keep in mind when fighting a French tank, especially one with an autoloader against which killing the gunner should be your absolute priority:

Let me conclude by mentioning that what I really like with these French tanks is the diversity of gameplay they already offer at all BR (quite unique at BR 6.3-8.7), despite the respectable but limited number of tanks available (more soon, I guess; hopefully starting with my wish list).

Thanks for reading this review (and feel free to consult my French tanks video playlist)! I hope you found it of interest. If so, leave your thoughts below and recommend it. If not, do exactly the same!

In the wish list, we could add the AMX-10RC modernisation (the latest variant used in the French ground forces and thus also the variant currently used by Ukraine). I believe it has significantly more armor on the sides and better thermals.

I recently got the idea to make a thread listing all vehicles that could carry ATGMs since the french tree currently only has 3, one being a premium, another one being overBRed and the last one being the only interesting one imo (AMX-30 ACRA). France...

I decided to work on it in past.but only ground attack/recon missions are available .for reason slow speed aircraft absolutely we need to work on terrain and ground/sea objects . south china project campaign has similar terrain and OBJ

The Groupes Mobiles are not an addition to the CEFEO TO&E. They are just regimental teams created out of the battalions listed above. The french combined different units into different GMs as the war went on.

The Groupes Mobiles had 3 infantry battalions assigned; one Colonial infantry, the other two were N African/ Central African/Vietnamese. Unit was motorized with usually a squadron of armor. Also a battalion of artillery.

The pure Vietnamese AVN units are noted.

as for the strategic nodes, they need a lot of work and still trying to figure out how they work and how the coordinate system works - there will need to be a lot of them and considering how the campaigns work (iirc) there may have to be more than one viet minh factions as they are very spread out all over the map.

so for the basic 46/full campaign, the French Base should be Hanoi and the campaign ends when it is captured, cambodia, laos and Annam(south vietnam) could be french allies to begin with - with a setup much like that found in the woi

my plan for the next little while is to get the main campaign up and running, that being the 46 to 56(ish) campaign and maybe do a quick little 45-46 Operation Masterdom with mockup units from the base game(p-51s and t-34s) to test out how the strategic nodes work

why would you even need to use the terrain editor? You're not changing the physical properties of the map. you only need to edit the targets ini, changing alignments (enemy to friendly) as is said way up on the thread. Front lines will, of course, need redrawing, as will the location statements in the nations ini, as well as the allowed nations themselves. The "theatre name" and acutal name (as seen in the vietnamsea.ini) will also need change to "French Indo-China". This will, obviously, REQUIRE a new terrain folder "FIC" for example. It's just like build a new terrain, but with pre-existing stock items (well, I'm sure the airfields will need their building, and possibly even the runways, back-dated to late 1940s style structures. plenty of those around)

the reason i need to use the terrain editor is to be able to get reliable coordinates for strategic node/ points that are not already in the game(or in the cities list). Basically, the engine was designed for conventional warfare, Indochina and Vietnam where both heavily guerrilla and asymmetrical and to best emulate that i think we will need a lot of nodes and a lot of small units from battalion size and upwards to be spread out over the map. This will help dilute french and Vietminh strength so that the ground conflict and ground interactions from all units can be intensified (in comparison to WOV where units are basically static) so that the campaign also wont just be the same few areas over and over again that are interacted with as that could lead to a very boring campaign.

well, small progress, I have had a lot of fails... or First Attempts In Learning Stuff... i think i got strategic node edits down in a separate mod, which showed me that i need to work with front lines, land and sea routes but the basic mod structure stuff is mostly down now, so have started to rework on the strategic nodes in Indochina after which the more intensive work on the other stuff can slowly begin after that...

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