Reference
The guns
The Iron Nest is an 800mm emplacement with two guns. This is what that caliber means at the console: what you load, how far it reaches, and why the other big number in the campaign is not yours.
800mm, quoted by High Command
The caliber is not left to inference — the campaign states it. When a target survives a hit that should have ended it, High Command reclassifies the enemy with the line “A dispersed battery does not relocate. A rail gun does not withstand an 800mm shell. This one did both.” That shell is yours. The gun crew credits call them the 800mm cannons in the same breath.
For scale, 800mm is exactly the calibre of the Schwerer Gustav — the largest-calibre rifled weapon ever fired in combat. Two mortars were built to a wider bore and neither ever saw action. So the Nest is not exaggerating for effect: it sits precisely at the historical ceiling for a gun of this kind.
Two guns, laid separately
The console does not treat the Nest as one weapon. There is a Left Gun and a Right Gun, and each carries its own elevation dial, its own elevation-error readout and its own system-pressure gauge. Confirming elevation on one does not confirm it on the other, and an elevation error that appears on one side only is the usual reason a salvo lands split.
Caliber sets the payload, charge sets the range
All 21 shell types share the same charge-to-range ladder — the powder decides how far the round flies, and the shell decides what happens when it lands. That is why the range table is identical on every ammo page.
| Powder charges | Maximum range |
|---|---|
| 1 | 5 km |
| 2 | 10 km |
| 3 | 15 km |
| 4 | 20 km |
| 5 | 25 km |
| 6 | 30 km |
Work a specific range back to a charge with the ballistics calculator.
The 580mm is shooting at you, not from you
The other caliber in the campaign belongs to the enemy. Two Vickers 580mm naval guns hold the cliffs above the harbour at Cartagena. They begin the mission inactive, and the counter-battery timer starts the moment they come online — the briefing warns you before it happens.
Later the campaign introduces something worse: a single mobile, heavily armoured, multi-gun battery that survives an 800mm hit and relocates afterwards. High Command designates it the Enemy Iron Nest — a gun built to the same idea as yours.
Caliber decides very little about which round to send. Damage spans 0–2 and blast radius 0.07–3 across the 21 shell types, and armour is beaten by the right round rather than a bigger one.
Common questions
What caliber is the gun in IRON NEST?
The Iron Nest fires 800mm shells. High Command's briefings quote the figure directly — a rail gun does not withstand an 800mm shell — and the emplacement mounts two of these guns side by side.
Does the Iron Nest have one gun or two?
Two. The gun deck labels them Left Gun and Right Gun, and each has its own elevation readout, elevation error and system pressure gauge. You lay them separately.
What is the maximum range of the Iron Nest?
30 kilometers, at the sixth and largest powder charge. Each charge adds roughly 5 km of reach, and the charge-to-range table is the same for every shell — the charge sets the distance, the shell decides what happens on arrival.
What is the 580mm gun in IRON NEST?
The Vickers 580mm is an enemy naval battery, not your gun. Two of them overlook the harbour at Cartagena and start the counter-battery timer once they come online.