World of Warships Supertest: French Tier X Cruiser Marseille

Historical background

Soooooo… In terms of Frankenstein Monster made in Wargaming, I think that Marseille takes the cake.

This ship is a big mishmash of the 17 500 tons battlecruiser design with a preliminary design from the Richelieu-class battleships. More precisely, Project 4. This early design had the same turret placement as the Nelson-class battleships but with 380 mm guns.

To this already odd mix, they added the same 330 mm guns as on the Dunkerque-class but that’s not all! They also decided to give it a fairly cursed secondary battery by taking the triple 152 mm secondaries from the Richelieu-class and then using 138.6 mm guns on them.
Last nail on the coffin, we are talking about a ship with armaments and design decisions from the mid to late 1930s. Why on God’s green Earth does it have a superstructure straight from the 1920s? It just makes no sense at all when at this period, you already had French ships appearing with more modern superstructure like the Algérie or the Dunkerque-class.

So yeah… it’s basically one of the worst designs Wargaming came up with so far.

In terms of in-game characteristics, Marseille is armed with some of the biggest guns in the game for a cruiser with all turrets located at the front of the ship. She suffers from a long main battery reload time and one of the worst cruiser dispersion but it is compensated by a Main Battery Reload Booster consumable.
Her armament is reinforced by a heavy secondary battery with improved dispersion similar to Massachusetts or Schlieffen.

The ship is thinly protected for a large cruiser but in return, she gets good concealment and, good agility, especially thanks to the Engine Boost consumable.

Ship’s preview

Ship’s camouflage

For the classic reminder, this is a ship in testing, anything can change so don’t look at her like she would already be released.

Modules

Hull	Engine	Gun Fire Control System	Main battery
Marseille	Propulsion: 240 000 HP	‎‎PCA n° 10 Mle 1	330 mm/50 Mle 1931 in a turret

General Characteristics

Main Armament

3 x 3 330 mm/50 Mle 1931 in a turret The middle turret can rotate at 360°
Maximum Firing Range	19.590 km
Reloading Time	24.0 s
180 Degree Turn Time	36.0 s
Optimal firing angles at the front	0°
Optimal firing angles at the rear	30° for 2 turrets 38° for 3 turrets
Sigma	1.80 sigma
Maximum Dispersion	213 m
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 330 mm HE OEA Mle 1935
Alpha Damage	4 800
Penetration capacity	55 mm
Explosion size	1.91
Fire chance	35 %
Projectile Speed	885 m/s
Air Drag	0.293
Projectile Mass	385.0 kg
Type of Projectile	AP – 330 mm AP OPfK Mle 1935
Alpha Damage	9 700
Projectile Speed	870 m/s
Air Drag	0.28
Projectile Mass	560.0 kg
Projectile Krupp	2 428
Projectile Detonator	0.033 s
Detonator threshold	55 mm
Ricochet Angles	45° – 60°

Secondary Armament

4 x 3 139 mm/50 Mle 1938 in a turret 6 x 2 139 mm/50 Mle 1938 on an Mle 1938 mount
Maximum Firing Range	8.300 km
Reloading Time	6.5 s
Sigma	1.0 sigma
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 139 mm HE OEA Mle 1928
Alpha Damage	2 000
HE penetration	23 mm
Explosion Size	0.5
Chance to Cause Fire	10 %
Projectile Speed	840 m/s
Air Drag	0.234
Projectile Mass	40.2 kg

Anti-air Armament

Consumables

Slot 1	Slot 2	Slot 3	Slot 4	Slot 5
Damage Control Party Work time: 5 s Cooldown: 60 s	Defensive AA Fire Number of charges: 3 Work time: 40 s Cooldown: 80 s Damage from continuous DPS: +50% Damage from flak explosions: +300%	Fighter Number of charges: 3 Work time: 60 s Cooldown: 90 s Number of fighters: 4 Patrol radius: 3.0 km	Repair Party Number of charges: 3 Work time: 28 s Cooldown: 80 s HP regeneration speed: +0.5%/s Casemate damage regeneration: 50% Citadel damage regeneration: 10%	Main Battery Reload Booster Number of charges: 4 Work time: 15 s Cooldown: 80 s Effect: -50% Main battery reload time
	Hydroacoustic Search Number of charges: 3 Work time: 100 s Cooldown: 120 s Torpedo spotting range: 3.5 km Ship spotting range: 5.0 km	Engine Boost Number of charges: 3 Work time: 180 s Cooldown: 90 s Speed bonus: +20%

The Armor

External armor protection:

Front and rear armor protection of the middle section:

Turtleback:

Citadel armor protection:

Turrets armor protection:

Hidden main armor deck:

Hidden armor protection inside the stern:

Personal Opinion

Marseille has the strengths of having very strong guns, good concealments and mobility as well as the advantageous main battery placement (when she isn’t kiting). She also still retains the glaring weaknesses of the previous ships and, arguably makes it worse.

At tier X, it is not a secret for anyone that we have a lot of strong roaming, damage-focused cruisers. Here, we are looking at yet another one that suffers from an over-reliance on a consumable that has to compensate for both very long reload time and poor dispersion. Of course, the firepower without reload booster would still be decent but it would definitely lag behind that of Hindenburg, Venezia, Henri IV or even Yoshino.

She also suffers from the 30 mm plating and overmatchable turtleback as well as a vulnerable front citadel athwartship. Long story short, tier X battleships will eat her alive. If it wasn’t bad enough, her Repair Party only covers for 10% of citadel damage but it could be a bug.
Also, just like Brest, she retains the massive issue of having a slow turret traverse on a ship that has a tight turning radius and on top of that moves fast. The guns will have no way

We will see how it goes and Wargaming have all the time in the world to balance them but right now, I’m honestly unimpressed by these French large cruisers.

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