Enemy Types & Weak Points — What You're Shooting At — Iron Nest Wiki

Launch Version / Updated: August 11, 2026

You never see your targets — you read about them, plot them, and shoot at their grid coordinates. Knowing what a target is decides everything before the first shell: which shell to load, how hard it is to kill, whether it shoots back, and whether killing it pauses the counter-battery clock. This guide catalogues every confirmed target type in the campaign, its behavior, its weak point, and the cheapest reliable way to kill it.

The Five Confirmed Target Classes

The community has mapped the campaign's targets into five armor classes. Target class is not always announced — the language of the spotter report tells you which class you are facing ("trench system" = Class 1, "convoy moving east" = Class 3, "hardened position" = Class 5).

Class	Target	Optimal Shell	Kill Difficulty	Shoots Back?
Class 1	Light Infantry Trench	HE	Easy — wide blast radius preferred	No
Class 2	Supply Trucks / Light Vehicles	HE (point-detonating)	Easy	No
Class 3	Armored Convoy / Mechanized Column	Armor-piercing (AP)	Medium — moving target, must lead	No
Class 4	Enemy Artillery Battery	Counter-battery HE / HCHE	Medium — but ZERO tolerance	Yes — counter-battery fire
Class 5	Reinforced Bunker / Underground Cache	AP / bunker-buster	Hard — expect multiple hits	No

Class 4 is the exception to every rule: if you do not silence it fast, it silences you. The counter-battery guide covers that race in full.

Target-by-Target Breakdown

Infantry Trenches (Class 1)

Soft targets with a wide footprint. Any wide-blast shell clears them — HE at 0.27 km radius is the economical choice, HCHE (0.63 km) when they are packed. Community practice: use the Iris tool on the map to check the blast radius against the trench layout before spending a shell.

Supply Trucks & Light Vehicles (Class 2)

Logistics convoys moving supplies to the front. Soft-skinned, single-shell kills with HE. They are worth prioritizing when the briefing mentions them: starving the enemy of supplies weakens later phases.

Armored Convoys & Mechanized Columns (Class 3)

Moving armored targets. Two rules:

AP only — HE splashes off armor. A column of trucks led by an armored vanguard is AP territory from the first shot.
Lead the target. The convoy moves while your shell is in the air — potentially a long flight at long range — so aim at the road ahead of the vehicles, not at them.

Community-reported movement behavior: vehicles follow roads and valleys. If your intel says "convoy moving east," plot it along the marked road network, not across open ground — and if the radio signal is degraded, this rule is your best guess.

Enemy Artillery Batteries (Class 4)

The only target that fights back. Batteries have three characteristics you must respect:

The counter-battery timer starts the moment your first shell lands on enemy guns — every battery must be plotted BEFORE your first shot.
They are usually grouped; HCHE turns a clustered battery into a one-shot problem. When two targets sit close together, one HCHE round handles both.
Destroying batteries pauses the counter-battery clock, buying time to restock, repair and re-plot.

Speed beats elegance: HE for fast reliable kills, HCHE when they cluster. See the counter-battery guide for the full playbook.

Bunkers, FDCs & Underground Caches (Class 5 / Special)

The hardest armor in the game — bunkers, Fire Direction Centers, and underground supply caches. AP is the only confirmed shell that reliably penetrates them (community also references heavy "bunker-buster" rounds among the 30 advertised types, not yet confirmed at launch). Expect multiple hits and follow-up ranging shots: the first round often confirms the elevation, the second does the killing.

Fire Direction Centers deserve special mention: they are the brains of enemy counter-battery operations, and destroying one pauses counter-battery fire. But do not spend them the moment they appear — the pause is a resource. Save an FDC kill for the moment you need to work undisturbed (see counter-battery survival).

Civil Riots & Unrest (Special)

The civil-war setting adds a non-military target class: riots and civil unrest. HE clears them like any infantry concentration; tear gas is the non-lethal option (currently of limited mission use); phosgene removes them while leaving infrastructure intact — the choice when you need the ground (a bridge, a factory, a road junction) afterwards.

Reading the Spotter Report — Target Identification Table

Spotter Report Language	What It Actually Is	Load
"Trench system", "infantry screen", "dug-in position"	Class 1 infantry	HE
"Supply column", "trucks on the road"	Class 2 logistics	HE
"Convoy moving east/west", "mechanized column"	Class 3 armor	AP
"Enemy guns", "battery near…"	Class 4 artillery	HE / HCHE
"Hardened position", "bunker", "fortified ridge"	Class 5 fortification	AP
"Fire direction post", "FDC coordinates"	FDC	AP
"Riots", "civil unrest at…"	Unrest	HE / tear gas / phosgene
"Depot", "underground stores", "ammo dump"	Supply cache	AP (underground)

Threat Priority — What to Kill First

Enemy artillery (Class 4) — the only target that can kill you. Always first, always all of them.
FDCs — but saved for when the pause is actually needed.
Bunkers (Class 5) — they stall the advance; missions fail when they hold.
Armored convoys (Class 3) — slow to kill, easy to lose track of.
Supply targets (Class 2) — soft and quick; mop up between priority targets.
Infantry (Class 1) — the cheapest kill per credit; good for kill streaks and accuracy medals.

The Enemy Weak-Point Cheat Sheet

Target	Weak Point	One-Line Tactic
Infantry trenches	Wide blast	HE; check radius with the Iris
Supply trucks	Thin skin	Point-detonating HE, single shot
Armored convoy	Follows roads	Lead the column along the road, AP only
Artillery battery	Clustering	Mark ALL before first shot; HCHE the cluster
Bunker / cache	AP penetration	AP, expect 2+ hits, correct from first impact
FDC	AP + timing	Save the counter-battery pause for when you need it

Next steps: All Shell Types & Ammo — Story Mode Walkthrough — Counter-Battery & Survival