Convective core mass at the end of He-burning as a function of the initial mass for nonrotating and rotating stars at Z = 0.006 and Z = 0.014. The models with initial masses lower than 180 M_⊙ are from Ekström et al. (2012) for Z = 0.014 and from Eggenberger et al. (2021) for Z = 0.006, and share the same physics, albeit with the differences described in Sect. 2. The range of CO core masses from Farmer et al. (2019) where (P)PISNe can occur is shown as an example to underline the very different potential final fate of VMSs when considering rotation and metallicity effects.