Iron Nest Mission 11: High Tide - 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: Two Corridors, Two Guns, One Deadline

High Tide is the campaign’s endurance test. There is no clever trick to discover and no single target that ends the mission. What you have is two landing corridors, two guns, and a clock that runs until 07:14.

The mission is won by throughput — how many shells you can put into the right water in the time available — and lost by diversion — chasing targets that look important and are not.

The single most important decision: gun assignment

Before the first craft reaches the beach, decide which gun owns which corridor and never renegotiate it mid-engagement.

Gun	Corridor	Role
Left Gun	Northern approach	Permanent. Never re-tasked.
Right Gun	Southern approach	Permanent. Never re-tasked.

Splitting the corridors is what buys you efficiency. If both guns track the same craft, one corridor goes unwatched and a landing succeeds. If you switch a gun mid-wave, you lose the preloaded solution you were holding and start the next shot from nothing.

Target doctrine: craft, not hulls

Landing craft advance in predictable lanes at predictable speed. That predictability is your advantage — but only against craft already committed to the beach approach.

Transports standing off on the horizon are a distraction dressed up as an opportunity. They are large, stationary, and satisfying to hit. Destroying one changes nothing about the current wave, and it costs you the shells you need for the craft currently inbound.

Rule: engage what is landing, never what is waiting.

Leading the target

Craft move, so a firing solution aimed at where a craft is will land behind it. Two techniques work here:

• Aim ahead along the lane. In a predictable approach channel, place the shell where the craft will be, not where it currently sits.
• Prefer HCHE. The wide blast tolerance forgives a small lead error. Against a moving target, HCHE converts an approximate solution into a kill; H demands a precision you cannot reliably deliver on a moving hull.

The 07:14 deadline

The deadline is the entire objective. You are not required to sink the invasion — only to hold the perimeter until the timestamp passes. That reframes what “doing well” means:

• Sustained fire beats spectacular single kills.
• A corridor covered with steady HCHE is worth more than one emptied by a perfect shot.
• At 07:14 you stop. Continuing to fire after the objective confirms risks nothing and gains nothing.

Pre-Calculated Firing Solutions

Target	Target Grid	Turret Bearing	Target Range	Powder Charges	Elevation (θ)	Ammunition
North Lane — Near CRAFT	Grid N2 5.0	315.0°	10.80 km	3 Charges	43.20°	HCHE
North Lane — Far CRAFT	Grid N4 8.4	322.5°	12.60 km	3 Charges	50.40°	HCHE
South Lane — Near CRAFT	Grid S3 6.2	040.0°	11.40 km	3 Charges	45.60°	HCHE
South Lane — Far CRAFT	Grid S6 1.7	048.0°	13.40 km	3 Charges	53.60°	HCHE

[!NOTE] All four lanes sit inside the 10–15 km band — 3 charge bags, multiplier 4.0. That is deliberate: it means a single charge state serves both guns and both ranges, so you never have to stop firing to re-charge during a wave.

Step-by-Step Operator Routine

Phase 1: Prepare Both Guns (Before First Contact)

1. Requisition 12 HCHE shells and 2 H shells, plus 30 powder charge bags — roughly 3 bags per shell fired, and you will fire a lot of shells.
2. Assign Left Gun to the Northern corridor and Right Gun to the Southern corridor. Announce the assignment out loud; it prevents accidental re-tasking under pressure.
3. Preload both guns with HCHE and 3 charge bags before the first craft appears.
4. Set Left Gun to 43.20° / 315.0° and Right Gun to 45.60° / 040.0° — the “near” solutions for each lane.

Phase 2: First Wave — Establish the Rhythm

1. Hold both guns on their near-lane solutions. Do not traverse until a craft commits to the approach.
2. As craft enter the near lane, fire alternating guns: Left, Right, Left, Right. Alternating keeps both barrels cool and both corridors simultaneously covered.
3. Between shots, glance at the far-lane solutions (50.40° / 322.5° and 53.60° / 048.0°) so you can re-lay instantly when craft push deeper.

Phase 3: Mid-Wave — Shift to Far Lanes

1. As the near lane clears, re-lay Left Gun to 50.40° / 322.5° and Right Gun to 53.60° / 048.0°.
2. Keep the alternating rhythm. The far lanes take longer flight times, so your rate of fire naturally drops — that is expected, not a failure.
3. Ignore transports on the horizon. They will remain on the horizon for the whole mission. They are not the objective.

Phase 4: Hold to 07:14

1. Continue alternating. If a corridor goes quiet, hold the gun loaded and pointed at the lane rather than re-tasking it to the busy side.
2. Watch the clock, not the kill count. The objective is the timestamp.
3. If you run short on HCHE, load the 2 reserve H shells — but only against a craft that has stopped or beached, where a precision solution is achievable.

Phase 5: Stand Down

1. At 07:14, cease fire immediately, even if craft remain in the water.
2. Confirm the primary objective marker before doing anything else — including re-loading.
3. Do not fire on withdrawing craft. They are leaving; the mission is already complete.

[!IMPORTANT] Operator Rule: In High Tide, the gun assignment is the strategy. Decide it once, write it down, and never break it under pressure — a corridor left uncovered for ninety seconds is a lost beachhead, no matter how many craft you sank elsewhere.