Loading & Aiming Guide — Iron Nest Wiki

Launch Version / Updated: August 11, 2026

Everything between the firing card and the impact: loading shells and charges, traversing the turret, setting elevation, and pulling the cord. This is where the simulator lives — most of your playtime happens here, and it is also where the most expensive mistakes are made.

Loading the Gun

The gun loading platform sits beside the ballistic calculator. Work left to right, and never skip a step:

Step 1 — Select the shell

Pull the lever beneath the Shell Selector System Pressure gauge until the correct shell is at the front. Verify it visually — HE and AP look different in the tray.

Step 2 — Ram the shell

Pull the handle below the Shell Rammer System Pressure gauge to ram the shell into the loading chamber.

Step 3 — Dispense powder charges

Each of the six levers below the Powder Charges gauges is one charge. The total must match the charge count from your firing card. More charges = longer range; fewer = shorter.

Step 4 — Ram the charges

Pull the final handle to complete the load.

⚠️ CRITICAL: You cannot unload. Once a shell and its charges are in the gun, they are in. Load the wrong shell or the wrong charge count and you must either adjust your firing solution around the mistake or fire it off and start over. Verify every load — the machine will not.

The Twin Guns

The Iron Nest carries two guns that operate independently:

Elevate and rotate them separately — one can be loaded while the other fires.
Prepare different shell types simultaneously: AP in the left barrel for the bunker, HE in the right for the infantry screen.
Each gun arms and fires separately at the trigger station.

Good twin-gun workflow: while the left gun is mid-flight on target A, the right gun is already loaded for target B on a similar bearing. Missions run much faster when both barrels are never idle.

Aiming — Rotation

Start with rotation — traversing the full 360° arc takes time.

Match the rotation counter to the bearing value on your clipboard (from the firing card, upper-right).
Use the heavy lever for fast movement, the wheel for fine adjustment.
Return the heavy lever smoothly — sudden movements can damage machinery and trigger repairs.
Fine-tune until the counter matches the bearing digit for digit.

Aiming — Elevation

The elevation console locks until loading is finished, and resets to zero after every shot.

Set the gun elevation from your firing card (lower-left value).
Move the lever to approximate elevation, then wait for the gun to stop moving.
Fine-tune with the wheel to match the calculated value exactly.
Never touch the wheel while the gun is still moving — it can jam the machinery.

After the shot, elevation resets to zero and locks again until the next load completes.

The Firing Sequence

At the trigger station:

Arm the gun — pull the lever on the left side; each gun arms separately
Confirm systems — all readiness indicators must be green
Flip all five switches
Pull the large central cord to fire

The recoil shakes the whole machine. Then the waiting begins: confirmation comes by radio, map tokens (red skull = kill, blue skull = friendly fire), and updated objectives. Shells can take a long time to arrive at extreme range — hold corrections until the round lands.

Malfunctions & Maintenance

Machinery breaks under hard use:

Steam leaks reduce hydraulic pressure and degrade performance — fix them promptly.
Hydraulic pressure should sit in the safe band shown on the gauge (launch-build ranges are documented in the systems & failures guide). Exceeding the ceiling risks a blowout that locks the turret and forces a repair minigame. Feather the valves and let the system cool between large movements.
Clumsy lever work (slamming the rotation lever, touching the elevation wheel mid-movement) causes jams and damage. Smoothness is speed.

The Full Sequence, One More Time

Firing card from the ballistic calculator
Select + ram shell, dispense + ram charges (verify! verify! verify!)
Rotate to bearing (heavy lever, then wheel)
Elevate to the card's value (lever, wait, wheel)
Arm, confirm, flip five switches, pull the cord
Observe the result, clean the map, and do it again — faster this time