The Re.2005 VDM situation is crazy

[Nufeneguediz]

The Re.2005 VDM is terrible at the moment, but it can be fixed

As we all can see from the plane stats, the poor Re.2005 VDM at the moment is just a flat out worse Re.2005 serie 0 at the same BR.
This makes absolutely 0 sense in many ways and I want to go over them together.

1) It’s not fun to play
The most important reason of them all, more even than the historical accuracy, is this. Games should be fun to play, but this plane just isn’t fun.
The Re.2005 serie 0 already struggles quite a bit at 6.0 because it’s flight performance is more akin to that of the Spitfire Mk.IX (which is at 4.7 and with better guns since now HE shells don’t work). At 6.0 the normal Re.2005 is simply too slow and has quite bad climb for a fighter. You mostly get kills by preying on players who underestimates you and that for some reason decide not to just dive away. It’s quite hard, but you can make it work. The Re.2005 VDM is just gonna be unbearable: you have the flight performance of some 3.7 aircraft at 6.0. Yeah it will pull hard for one turn, but the lack of sustained turn rate and climb rate means that if you don’t get a kill in the first turn you’re out (and you face planes that can pull as hard as you like Spitfire LF mk.9s and yak-3Us).
If Gaijin decides not to change at all the plane, they should at least lower the Re.2005 VDM br to at least 5.3.

2) It’s not historically accurate
This plane is the second prototype of the Re.2005 and has the number 495 (MM. 495) while the one we have in the tech tree is the first prototye MM. 494.
As you can see written on the tail section

If you want the detailed history and specs of the plane I suggest you look at the suggestion post that supposedly was used for the implementation: Re.2005 mm.495 vdm. It is very well made.

TL;DR MM.495 started out identical to MM.494 with the modified canopy. After the Serie 5 aircraft trials (G55, C205, Re2005, Bf109 G-4 and Fw190 A-5 competing with each other) the German decided it was worth to send some of their newest tech to improve MM.495. This tech was: a DB605A-1(M), a VDM propeller and MW-50 device for water injection and methyl alcohol + some changes in rpm and compression rates.
All these changes made the plane reach 720 km/h in level flight, have a 20 m/s rate of climb and have ~1815 HP special emergency power at 0 m and ~1700 HP on maximum power.
The plane we have in game is far from this performance because it just has the VDM propeller (which to my knowledge shouldn’t change top speed and RoC). This is simply unhistorical.
There aren’t many sources on the plane in general other than the testimonies of the officials and engineers who worked on it since it was a prototype and after 1943 it became borderline impossible to work to new planes in Italy. However we found some books that state the same performances and they were used for the suggestion and this bug report Community Bug Reporting System .
The bug report was accepted, but it’s likely that the devs will reject it. This matches out with the recent comment that was deleted on the bug report and it being marked as “not enough info” and back to “accepted”. The bug report has been rejected

screenshots of the bug report and its struggle

Here’s also a message that was deleted:

If these sources weren’t enough, why accepting the suggestion post in the first place? What other sources could there be for this kind of aircraft? And would it be seriously a problem to use the ones we have? The values they give us aren’t something crazy and very much in line with the performance boost the new propulsion apparatus could give. Considering we have the photo of the plane with different prop and different engine cover it’s extremely unlikely that this is all fake.

Edit: The bug report has now been rejected on the basis that test pilot accounts aren’t reliable and that test methods are unclear. This is… understandable and I am willing to accept it, but only if they acknowledge the use of DB605AM. Multiple secondary sources say it mounted the DB605A-1 with MW-50 which is exactly what the DB605AM was. We already know the performance of this engine with a VDM propeller and we already know the data on Re.2005 chassis. Why not changing the Re.2005 VDM performance to that of a Re.2005 serie 0 with a raw increase of 300hp?

Since this is a very unique plane I’d love to see it with its historic performance and the br adjusted accordingly.

3) It’s not economically clever
Because of the first two reason stated above, this battlepass is way less attractive to anyone.
People who love the MM.495 like me aren’t interested because the plane we have in game is nothing like it’s irl counterpart. People who don’t care about its history but only on its in game performance aren’t interested because it’s quite bad nor unique. It simply makes Gaijin earn less money

A quick and easy way for Gaijin to sell more battlepass is to change the plane into its early configuration making it just a premium Re.2005 serie 0. It would be historical, it would be easy and it would convince more player to buy the battlepass… or simply do one of the other 2 fixes.

Solutions?

• Don’t change its performance but lower its br
• Change its performance to the enhanced version (new engine and MW-50 system)
• Change its performance to that of the Re.2005 serie 0

If you have some other ideas please comment below. Also please share this post to get Gaijin attention and fix this issue and go support the bug report even more Community Bug Reporting System.
Any change to this situation would be a win for both the community and Gaijin.

Edits and updates
Like Thanos said “I’ll do it myself”. The Reggiane archives are under restoration until January. When they’ll re-open I’ll go there and try to find as much info on MM.495 as possible. I’ll also try to gather info on MM.494 performance with both the ruined engine and the fresh one as it appears Gaijin modeled the VDM on the performance of MM.494 with ruined engine.
@S_bastienZ88 and @paolgand1975-psn are the main brains behind all these researches (I wanna thank them a lot) and they as well are planning to go to other museums and archives to look for more information like the Italian air force archives.
Paolo also contacted the Historical Archive of the German Armed Forces, and they told him they are considering the request, but given the large number of inquiries about World War II, it will take some time.
Daimler-Benz instead refuses to answer to WW2 questions as an internal policy.

Some technical data and how the Re.2005 VDM should perform

Propulsion: DB605A-1 with different compression ratio and an MW-50 system and the VDM propeller.
The DB605A-1 is a modified DB605A which is just a prototype of the DB605AM. It feature a MW-50 water and alcohol injection system and VDM propeller and spinner.

what is a DB605AM

More technical tables at this comment: The Re.2005 VDM situation is crazy - #232 by Nufeneguediz

Engine specs:

Engine power:

• up to ~1815 HP WEP at 0 meters at 2,800 rpm for takeoff with MW-50 injection
• up to ~1705 HP at 2,800 rpm at 4,000 meters for maximum power with MW-50 injection

Rate of climb: suggested 20 m/s, but we don’t have direct tests.
MM. 494 climbed to 8000m in 7’50" which is 17m/s so it can’t be lower than that. Depending on how Gaijin models climb rate, it should fluctuate around 20m/s. But a 300hp boost surely will have quite an impact.

Vmax at 7300 m: ~720 km/h while in horizontal flight — some people in the comments did some calculations and proved this number is quite unrealistic: it’s more likely that the plane could reach 680-690 km/h —
Vmin: stall speed at 155(flaps 136) km/h
Wing load: 174.5kg/m²
Empty Weight: 2,600kg (With armor)
Liquids: 440kg(fuel=400kg, oil=40kg), 630l*
Max Take-Off Weight: 3,560kg (Without bombload)

Other differences with the serie 0:

• The canopy structure
• The inverted throttle
• The nose of the plane with a longer air intake

[The_diddler2]

yeah fully agree with this the current Re.2005 VDM just doesn’t make sense performance or gameplay wise the plane feels like a downgrade instead of an evolution when in reality the MM.495 was an upgraded prototype not some nerfed variant with less power the historical records are clear it had a DB605A-1(M) with MW-50 and pushed around 1815 hp at sea level that’s a massive boost and the top speed of 720 km/h lines up with what it should be doing in game

the way it sits now at 6.0 with basically Serie 0 flight performance just kills any motivation to fly it it turns fine once or twice but bleeds energy like crazy and gets outclimbed by almost everything the VDM prop alone wouldn’t make the plane worse so the fact it feels like it is shows something is off it’s not fun and it’s not authentic

Gaijin should either give it the full upgraded setup (engine + MW-50 + rpm boost) so it performs as the MM.495 did historically or drop it to around 5.3-5.7 if they want to keep the current stats because as it stands it’s punishing the player for flying something that was supposed to be better not worse

a lot of people would actually buy the battle pass if the VDM was fixed and accurate because it’s an iconic Italian design with German tech crossover that deserves to shine not sit as another “copy but slower” reward version this is one of those rare cases where fixing it helps everyone players get a real aircraft experience
and can we talk to moderator here to help with this bizarre situation

[coffee_can-psn]

i was extremely confused and then disappointed although not surprised at this half baked and ahistorical current implementation, too bad I had already bought the bp before noticing it’s just a worse series 0.

[Fedorann]

It might be worth mentioning that it’s not an MM.494 either. AFAIK the 494 never mounted the VDM. It was a completely different prototype. The MM.495 received the VDM propeller and the boosted engine at the same time, at least from what we know from publicly available sources. VDM with an unboosted DB605A never existed.

[The_diddler2]

man what a let down fr

[coffee_can-psn]

i am going to pray it’s fixed by the time I actually grind it out because it gets s beautiful skin and I love Italian aircraft even if they’re so overtired

[The_diddler2]

i was surprised because i thought it wasnt the 495 because didnt had the upgraded engine and other stuff

[coffee_can-psn]

yeah then I saw the number on the fuselage, the plane has such potential I truly hope this is fixed.

[Nufeneguediz]

Obviously this isn’t a MM. 494 and minor stuff like the canopy and cockpit placement cannot be the same, but when it was made it had the same engine and propeller as the MM. 494. Because of this, if Gaijin really doesn’t want to give the MM. 495 its post modification performance (for completely unknown reasons), it could at least give it the older prop so it would perform like the MM. 494 we have in the tech tree.

But yeah knowing the plane we have in game rn never existed in that configuration (old engine + VDM prop) really doesn’t help.

[The_diddler2]

yeah i still think it’s worth it honestly it’s basically a premium Re.2005 so if you just want to grind fast or get an event done it does the job you can delete people in headon if you know what you’re doing and it punishes anyone to try and turn with you it’s not perfect but it’s still a fun killer machine
that said i really hope they fix it along the way because it deserves the proper setup they’ll probably get around to it but it’s gonna take time and effort and that’s the part that pisses me off man Gaijin is a multimillion company and still relies on players to do the research for them like come on hire a small dedicated team that does nothing but gather data verify specs and model vehicles accurately instead of waiting for community reports

[Fedorann]

Okay yeah, I misread a little. Thought you said the VDM in-game was a 494 (despite the tail number being 495).

[coffee_can-psn]

idk about it being a good head on machine with mg151s being what they are tbh, and around that br 4 20mms start proliferating, it’ll just gather dust because it’s an time limited plane that unless it’s fixed will always just be the worst option. which is why I hope it is fixed because at least then it will deserve that br. I’m happy there’s finally attention being brought on this because I really love the re2005 and I was genuinely hyped

[Nufeneguediz]

As @coffee_can-psn said, at this br having 3 20mm cannons isn’t that rare. Plus the MG 151 nowadays are quite bad. The HE shells do nothing 80% of the times so paired with their low velocity they’re pretty bad. For head on they’re quite bad since enemy shells will reach you first, but also in dogfights you need to lead quite a lot. If you’re geriatrically slow like you’ll be on the VDM (but also on the standard re2005) it’s very hard to get the nose on target for enough time to get the 20mm to actually damage the enemy plane.
In this state, the VDM isn’t good even as a premium.

[Fedorann]

Yeah I’m going to have to disagree on the status quo being worth it. I have the whole Italian TT already and can’t really justify a worse Serie 0 for premium bonus. There’s way better stuff for grinding too.

The hype around VDM, at least for me, was that the Axis would finally get a fighter that could compete with the Spit LF Mk.IX. Bonus points for being Italian. Re.2005 in WT is held back by its engine - the extra topspeed, rate, and climb from the upgrade would shore up its weaknesses and let it hang with everyone else at the 5.7-6.7 range. The performance would be somewhere between an LF and a Griffon Spit, making the VDM a baller BP reward.

I get that Gaijin is trying to shy away from OP FOMO rewards now, but the ship has already sailed. VDM could’ve easily been tech tree. Now, they should at least deliver to make this battlepass season worth grinding.

[The_diddler2]

fr man the re2005 only lacking in engine department and yeah even with new engine i don’t think it would be breaking 580km at sea level, but the climb rate would be crazy and actually would be great at any altitude because if you can’t catch em you can out climb them and dive and make gameplay more enjoyable and turn better at for longer because of the new engine

[MrJibJub]

would like to see the tech tree version moved down to 5.7 cause it’s good but not 6.0 good and the VDM have its correct engine with the MW-50 system installed and that can stay at 6.0 but hey i’ve learned is that for props, gaijin doesn’t care. but keep the work up. we can hope.

[paolgand1975-psn]

Do we know which secondary source the devs are taking inspiration from? Because I think we’ve already reviewed everything that’s normally available.
It would really help to know also in order to accept the solution presented.

Since the discussion with devs is asymmetrical, it’s quite discouraging to have to keep shooting in the dark.

Now, assuming they don’t want to refer to what’s reported in most of the books I mentioned in my report, could we at least know the source and configuration?

Because this one doesn’t even resemble the supposed March 1943 version with the Fiat Tifone engine and VFD-blade propeller — for which, at least as far as I know, no photos exist.

The one in the game is the 495, after the modifications from June 1943.

[Get_HeshED]

Didn’t they just close yet another report using “meh not enough info” excuse? Like what do they expect us to do? Find extensive credible sources that do not exist on a random one time modification to an Italian late WW2 plane that never even entered serial production?

They are just lazy, exactly as they were with sholef which to this day remains a half baked butchered piece of junk

[Nufeneguediz]

This is the situation rn. The devs apparently rejected the bug report, but some mod decided to give it another chance(?).

[Get_HeshED]

Let’s hope it passes. If we don’t manage to push it through now, they will just forget about this plane and never touch it again