Somua SM

Last updated 17th December 2024.

Somua SM is a tier 8 French heavy tank. It has good hull armour, a decent turret, and good mobility & speed; however, its gun is terrible in every aspect, having very low DPM, poor gun handling, slow aim time, and an extremely long reload.

1. Armour
2. Gun
3. Mobility
4. Equipment, provisions, & consumables
5. Gameplay advice
6. Overall
7. Is it worth getting?
8. Most recently sold for:
9. Camo cost:
10. Historical note:

Armour

(The Somua SM in the images is using Enhanced Armour)

Drag slider right -> to view 225mm AP
Drag slider <- left to view 265mm APCR

When flat and facing head-on:
Upper plate 255-270mm
Lower plate 120mm

Turret 200-280mm
Cupola 135mm

VS tier 7: 
Tier 7 tanks can easily penetrate the Somua’s lower plate and hatch. These are the only 2 real weakpoints to these enemies, as tier 7s have generally very low penetration, and the turret itself is still strong to their standard ammunition. 
Some higher penetration tier 7s (with high premium penetration) such as the Tiger I, T29, or AMX M4 45 can use premium ammunition and cut through the turret face fairly easily.

VS tier 8: 
Tier 8 enemies are essentially the same as tier 7s. The lower plate and hatch are easily penetrated. 
For higher penetration tier 8 tanks (with over 210mm standard penetration) will be able to fairly easily just shoot the turret face and go through it.
The upper plate will still bounce all standard ammo (other than tanks like the T34 with 248mm AP), only premium ammunition will go through, as shown in the image above.
Its best to angle the hull to bounce premium ammuntition, as the turret is still a smaller target, and there is a chance enemies hit an area they can’t penetrate.

VS tier 9: 
Tier 9 enemies can all easily go through the turret of the Somua SM, and the hatch and lower plate are still extremely weak. The upper plate is still fairly strong, especially if angled; but most enemies have enough premium penetration to go through it, even if its angled (such as tanks with 300mm HEAT)

Gun

The Somua SM mounts a 100mm autoloader.

-Alpha damage is 310 on AP, 260 on APCR, and 350 on HE
-It has 3 shells in the clip. Intra-clip reload is 3s, so in 6s it can deal 930 damage.
-Reload time is 23.2s, giving it 1880 DPM
-Penetration is 232mm on AP, 263mm on APCR, and 50mm on HE.
-Aim time is 4.4s/4.8s
–Estimated aim time is 4.4s/4.7s
–Base aim time is 2.6s, but it can get down to 2s.
-Dispersion is 0.344/0.292
–Gun handling is 0.22/0.22/0.16, or 0.2/0.2/0.14 with Vertical Stabilizer.
-Gun depression is -10 degrees

Overall the Somua SM’s gun is just bad, especially when you compare it to other 3×310 autoloaders in tier 8. It has a very long reload time, in fact the longest in tier 8, very low DPM, and the worst aim time and gun handling of any 310 damage gun. Dispersion is ok, but when the aim time and handling are that bad, the dispersion would ideally need to be better than just “ok” to compensate.

The only real good stats here are the penetration and gun depression, but these aren’t even better than what other tanks at this tier are able to achieve. Everything else on this gun is just below average and poor.

Mobility

-Top speed is 40km/h forwards, and -18km/h in reverse.
-Traverse speed is 35.3 deg/s on hard terrain, and 30.3 deg/s on medium terrain.
-In game acceleration rate is shown as 16.4 hp/t, it has an decent 1146.6hp engine for its 70 ton weight.
-Actual acceleration rate is 13.7 hp/t on hard terrain, and 11.7 hp/t on medium terrain.
–Terrain resistances are 1.2/1.4/2

Overall the Somua SM has quite impressive mobility, it accelerates quite fast and has good forward and reverse speeds. Its traverse speed is just average though, and it does slow the tank down quite a bit when it needs to turn.

Somua SM does have a small trick up its sleeve in terms of mobility. With a level 7 “repairs” crew skill and toolbox equipment, its track repair time is only 5 seconds, which is quite fast for a heavy tank.

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

Somua SM has no special consumables or provisions

Improved Ventilation:
Due to the gun of the Somua SM just being so bad in so many areas, vents are definitely needed. Vents will improve the reload time by about 0.5s, aim time by 0.1s, dispersion by 0.007 (doesn’t sound much but does make a difference), and also the traverse speed and terrain resistances will be improved.

While technically calibrated shells would mean that your tank can penetrate more enemies, thus not needing to aim as long for weakpoints; it does also just make your gun overall worse in all aspects other than penetration. The Somua SM’s gun already has good penetration, so calibrated shells are definitely not needed. Though if you think that you will be fine with using the Souma’s gun, then calibrated shells is also a valid choice.

Somua SM already has the least consistent gun for its alpha damage, use vents to make it better. 

Improved Modules:
The Somua is a fairly quick heavy tank, especially in a straight line, easily able to go 40km/h. Its also one of the heavier tier 8 tanks, weight 70 tons. Use improved modules to improve the Somua’s ramming capability, it allows you to take less damage when you ram an enemy.

Improved Assembly:
The armour layout of the Somua SM means that enhanced armour does not at all benefit the tank. Not that the upper plate and turret don’t need enhancing, but because of the lower plate and hatch. The lower plate is just so weak that even if using enhanced armour, every single lower tier tank you face can still penetrate it; and the turret has a very large hatch on it, meaning even if you enhance the armour, enemies can still very easily just shoot the hatch. This deems enhanced armour irrelevant, as it wouldn’t make a difference to where enemies can penetrate.

Use improved assembly instead, it will take this tank’s base HP of 1800 up to 1908.

Enhanced Gun Laying Drive:
The Somua SM has atrociously bad aim time, and it definitely does not struggle with shell velocity or penetration. There is no point taking supercharger on this tank, especially not when the accuracy and aim time of your gun is so poor.

Vertical Stabilizer:
Considering the terrible base gun handling of the Somua SM, along with the fact its an autoloader, and the fact its a frontline heavy tank, the Somua SM needs to use vertical stabilizer.
Vertical stabilizer will improve the gun handling, making the tank more accurate on the move, and in close-quarters combat; it will also improve the dispersion after each shot, a vital statistic on any autoloader, the better this stat is, the more accurately you can shoot out your whole magazine.

Gameplay advice

Somua SM plays quite similarly to an Emil 1, if you have played that tank before then you should feel quite comfortable in the Somua SM.

The tank basically just plays as a regular heavy tank, but with an autoloader. It can bounce shots on its hull armour, it can sidescrape, and it can use gun depression. Play it like you would play a generic heavy tank, but be aware of its differences.

Your turret is troll, not strong:
Don’t rely on your turret to get bounces, play the tank like you are expecting the enemies to penetrate the turret. If you poke a ridgeline, shoot quickly then retreat. The turret can’t bait shots and it will be penetrated if you give enemies the time to aim.

Don’t raise the gun all the way to hide the hatch:
This exposes the underside of the turret, which is just 200mm thick, and nearly everything will penetrate. This weakpoint when you raise the gun is also easier to hit than the hatch, as ther is no chance that the shells go high and miss. The middle of the turret is the very weakest part of the turret, and raising your gun just gives enemies a guaranteed shot into it.

What’s best to do instead is to move the gun erratically, up/down/left/right, move it unpredictably so enemies will only see constantly changing angles and weakpoints. It can confuse enemies into not knowing which area to shoot, and it may make them miss or bounce their shot. Though, there is not guarantee of this, but its at least better than not moving the turret.

Aim every shot very carefully.
Unless you absolutely have to take the shot (like when a one-shot enemy is about to escape or you are about to die), take the time to aim. This gun punishes each miss very hard as its an autoloader, not only that, but its the autoloader with the longest reload in tier 8. If you miss 1 shot, you are significantly lowering your DPM and damage output for the next ~30s.

The Somua’s gun wants to miss, it aims for so long and has such poor handling that if you don’t take the time to aim each shot perfectly, many shots will miss.

Sidescrape.
Unlike other French heavy tanks, the Somua SM does not have angled “shoulders”, and has a very strong 90mm of side armour, it also has a strong upper plate. The Somua is perfectly suited to sidescraping, so do it wherever its needed.

Note that the Somua SM has very bad HE shells.
They only do 350 damage, compared to most other 310 alpha heavy tanks, which do 400-440 on HE. Generally its best to not use this tank’s HE, especially on enemies you are able to use a spall liner.
If you use HE to shoot at enemies with spall liner, each HE shell will only do 280 damage, which is even 30 less than your AP shell.

Overall

Overall the Somua SM is a decent tank. It has great mobility and quite good armour, though its gun is very disappointing and the armour does have significant weakpoints.

Its very similar to an Emil 1, Emil 1951, or M-III-Yoh, it offers nothing new that those tanks can’t already do, which means its kind of a pointless tank. Its armour is worse than Emil 1 in all situations, and its worse than the 1951 and Yoh when using gun depression. Its gun is by far the worst one of these tanks, and its mobility is worse than the 1951.
The gun is what makes a tank work, a tank can still do well with bad armour or bad mobility, if it has a great gun. Somua SM is a tank that a bad gun, while it performs decently in battle, it just makes the tank very frustrating to play, and quite pointless, as many players would rather sacrifice some speed or armour to gain a good gun.

Is it worth getting?

Somua SM is absolutely NOT worth getting. For one, its still quite an expensive tank, but it is also just extremely similar to other tanks, which are just frankly better, cheaper, or even free.

The Emil 1 by far shares the most similarities with the Somua, and its a tech tree tank, meaning its free. Both have good hull armour, but the Emil 1 has no turret weakpoint and a better gun, instead of 40km speed. Its a bit slower but it plays and feels almost the same. Try the Emil 1 before buying this tank, if you don’t like the gun, don’t get the Somua; if you like the overall gameplay, then consider the Somua or Emil 1951.

-The Somua SM may be worth getting if you liked the armour and gun of Emil 1, but thought it lacked mobility, as the Somua is definitely more mobile, with the most similar armour on flat ground.
-Somua would only be worth getting if you really think that the Emil 1951 just wouldn’t suit you; as the Emil 1951 is a much better tank for any player who can use its armour correctly.

Somua SM is worth 5,000 gold. It really just doesn’t offer anything unique. Sure the combination of 40km speed and armour is a bit unique, but technically the Emil 1951 has that combination as soon as it uses gun depression. And of course the Somua’s gun is anything but unique, its the same as all other 310×3 autoloaders, just much much worse.

While the tank can perform well, its also just quite pointless to play, and the gun will frustrate the player.

Most recently sold for:

New release crates – March 2021
12,500 gold (Full bundle), 10,000 gold (Tank only) – May 2022
7,500 gold (Tank only) – July 2023

Camo cost:

Historical note:

Somua SM was ordered in 1946, but the prototype was not built until 1951. It was another French heavy tank design inspired by the Tiger II. 
The Somua SM itself is the tank’s hull. The turret was identical to the AMX 50’s turret (of the time this would be the AMX M4’s turret, also known as AMX 50 100), the gun was also identical, though many French tanks shared this same SA47 100mm autoloader.

In real life, the Somua SM had far less armour than the version in game has.

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