Iron Nest Mission 7: The Gorge - Solutions

Worked example: Bearing, range, charge and elevation figures below come from a sample playthrough. Enemy spawns and your Iron Nest’s position vary each run — always measure on the map and follow the in-game ballistic calculator.

Mission Critical Strategy: Firing Without Eyes

The Gorge is the mission that punishes operators who only know how to read a map. Heavy fog sits in the pass for the whole engagement and your optical rangefinder is useless past a few hundred metres. Acoustic telemetry — the system that normally back-computes a target’s grid from sound — is offline as well.

What you still have is a forward observer with a radio, and the ability to see where your own shells land.

That combination changes the entire firing method. You stop solving for an absolute coordinate and start solving for a delta — a correction applied on top of the last impact. This is called observed fire, and once you internalise it, The Gorge becomes one of the shorter missions in the campaign.

The two failures to avoid

1. Treating the reference shot as a shot. It is not. The first shell exists to be measured, not to hit. Operators who try to make the first round perfect spend three shells learning what one shell plus a correction would have taught them.
2. Ignoring the powder-charge band boundary. This is the trap the mission is built around. See below.

The band boundary trap

Elevation is not a linear function of range. Powder charges come in bands, and each band carries its own multiplier:

Range band	Powder charges	Multiplier (M)	Elevation = Range (km) × M
up to 5 km	1 bag	10.0	5.0 km → 50.00°
5 – 10 km	2 bags	5.0	10.0 km → 50.00°
10 – 15 km	3 bags	4.0	15.0 km → 60.00°
15 – 20 km	4 bags	3.0	15.3 km → 45.90°

Read the last two rows carefully. Adding 300 metres of range drops your required elevation by more than 14 degrees — because you crossed the 15 km boundary, added a charge bag, and the multiplier fell from 4.0 to 3.0.

If you re-lay without re-charging, that correction will land your shell kilometres short.

Pre-Calculated Firing Solutions

Target	Target Grid	Turret Bearing	Target Range	Powder Charges	Elevation (θ)	Ammunition
Reference Shot — Chokepoint	Grid G5 4.0	010.0°	15.00 km	3 Charges	60.00°	H (High Explosive)
Corrected Impact — Chokepoint	Grid G5 6.2	008.8°	15.30 km	4 Charges	45.90°	H (High Explosive)
Armoured Column — Behind Pass	Grid G8 1.5	014.5°	19.60 km	4 Charges	58.80°	STAR

[!WARNING] The reference shot and its correction sit on opposite sides of the 15 km band boundary. Note that the charge count changes from 3 to 4 — not the elevation.

Step-by-Step Operator Routine

Phase 1: Restore the Traverse Pump (Timer: Stopped)

1. Before loading anything, repair the damaged hydraulic traverse pump. The turret will not traverse under power until this is done, and every correction in this mission assumes you can re-lay quickly.
2. Confirm free traverse through the full arc by rotating the turret by hand once.
3. Requisition 8 powder charge bags, 4 H shells, and 2 STAR shells. You will burn more charges than shells here, because of the band crossing.

Phase 2: Reference Shot (No Timer)

1. Load Left Gun: 1 H shell + 3 charge bags. Set elevation 60.00°.
2. Traverse to 010.0° and fire the reference shell into the gorge.
3. Watch the impact, not the target. Note where it lands relative to the chokepoint.

Phase 3: Apply the Spotter Delta

1. Radio the observer for the correction. The standard call here is +1.2° left, +300 m.
2. Convert the bearing: 010.0° left by 1.2° gives 008.8°.
3. Convert the range: 15.00 km + 0.30 km = 15.30 km.
4. Re-charge the gun. 15.30 km sits in the 15–20 km band — 4 bags, multiplier 3.0. New elevation is 45.90°, which is lower than your reference shot.
5. Fire. Confirm the chokepoint is blocked.

Phase 4: Break the Armoured Column (No Timer)

1. The enemy armour is now queued behind the blocked pass at 19.60 km.
2. Load STAR — against a stationary, bunched column, the airburst spread does the work of three H shells.
3. 4 charge bags, elevation 58.80°, bearing 014.5°.
4. Two STAR shells are usually enough. If the observer reports the column still moving after two, switch back to H rather than firing a third.

[!IMPORTANT] Operator Rule: In this mission, always announce the band out loud before you announce the elevation. “Three bags, sixty degrees” prevents the single most common failure here — re-laying the corrected range while the gun is still charged for the reference shot.