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[Man of Paper]

Oh god, I just realized the wreakable havoc that results from dual-wielded concussion hammers. It'd be nice if there was a %chance to stun Armored dudes with them, not like they are now, but where dude might be out of the fight for a good few seconds after having his bell rung. It looks like tweaks might be made in patches or updates or whatever as optimizations occur, so who knows, maybe it'll get a little buff.

[Blaze]

Perhaps I can hazard a guess.

edit:


 

[Man of Paper]

Looks like the blasting through walls at high speeds (i.e. Concussion Hammering a guard through space and time) thing was fixed. Oh well.

[a1s]

Has anyone looted a concussion hammer? I've only seen them in the stores.

Yes. Not only that, I've found one the belonged to my previous character. I thought that would be dumb, but it was pretty cool.
That same character (the one who found it, not the one who owned it last) also went out in a pretty fun way

Spoiler: sorry about no screenshots (click to show/hide)

So I am assaulting a Sovereign citadel ship, the guards are all kitted out in shields, but I have several subverters, so it's fine. Also Urist McHammer (the concussion hammer) a visitor and a key stealer.
I start out fine, bash a few heads in (humanely) get a few keys, when I suddenly run into too many teleporting guards and get shot. I wake up outside the airlock having lost all but 12 seconds of my blood and thinking "retirement never sounded this good". But then I look a the ship, and (what's this?) it still has almost a minute on the clock. I can do this!
I get back in and rush for the pilot. Dash past a group of guards and into a corridor leading to the bridge, when gunshot rings out behind me. I'm used to these though, right? Doesn't matter- a second group of guards rushes at me from a side corridor. Frack. I Visitor out of their way in a weird hope they will run past me. They don't, so 2 second later I'm in the middle of their group and still running for that pilot. Multiple guards fire at me, but their shots ping off of each other's shields. As I run pas the last one I visitor again, straigt to the pilot's door. But it's locked. Subvert the door, hammer the pilot, get in his seat. Then 3 things happen all at once:
I take control of the ship, which tells me I have 0 seconds to get out before the ship goes "boom". I get shot. Then revived (having somehow lost 6 seconds of blood in less than a second of time.)
And then it all goes boom. A drink is raised. And yet another wannabe assassin asks Sader Fiasco for a favor. "Sure," she says " but it'll cost you. And I know just the way you can pay me back..."

[Gabeux]

I tend to get, uh, I think it's Coget's Hope a lot. Other than that, I don't really recall finding Concussion Hammers in crates.

Coget was one of my first characters and her mission was to save her husband. I was expecting to fail, so I guess the Hope comes from her believing in the power of hammering through a whole ship in order to save the loved one. 

I finished the game last week and I'm taking a break from it. I might play it from time to time. Definitely gonna watch for any content updates, though. Would be fun!

[Broseph Stalin]

So those people posting hijacking jobs ought to have a lawyer punch up their terms a little bit. Some stray gunfire hit a fuel barrel by the cockpit of a large glitcher ship. After it split apart I got paid for a pilots chair, a viewing window, and a thruster while 99% of the ship went floating aimlessly in space.

[Egan_BW]

Why exactly do they want a specific ship delivered to them anyway? Maybe all they really want is the black box in the pilot's room.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Have I complained about hijacking yet? Cause I don't like hijacking. It's a lot of trouble for very lackluster rewards. Seriously? We can't find a buyer for the ship? Not even the scrap?
Also, how thematic would it be to have to hijack a ship as a personal mission? How many stories are there of captains trying to recover their ships, or rivals fighting over a ship, etc. It'd be tough with the souped up enemies on personal missions, but still. :/

[Egan_BW]

I think if you got money for ships it would just become a way better way to get money than doing missions. Lots of the random ships you find are like the pilot and two defenceless guys with no locked doors. I remember it was said that in an earlier version of the game you would liberate stations by collecting enough ships to take it over, but that's replaced by the kinda generic liberation bar.

[Broseph Stalin]

I think if you got money for ships it would just become a way better way to get money than doing missions. Lots of the random ships you find are like the pilot and two defenceless guys with no locked doors. I remember it was said that in an earlier version of the game you would liberate stations by collecting enough ships to take it over, but that's replaced by the kinda generic liberation bar.

Is there anything especially wrong with that? I mean it seems like a sort of self-moderating issue. Hijacking doesn't advance liberation, there's a hard cap on how many stations a character can liberate, and money doesn't carry over between characters. Getting money through liberation might be slower but it's also progressing the game simultaneously.

The only times when cash from hijacking would really be helpful is when you're trying to get new kit to take on more serious missions (which seems like something the game could use), or your victory lap after you've done all the conquering you care to and you're just grinding mystery boxes for the coolest stuff while ignoring fiasco (which doesn't seem like a problem).

[Egan_BW]

I dunno, I didn't design the game. I just know that hijacking used to get you something, and now it doesn't. Which suggests that removing the reward fixed some design problem, or at least the developer thought it did.

[Damiac]

If hijacking paid at all well then you'd be obligated to hijack almost every ship you did a mission on, since by the time you finish the mission you're probably already at least halfway to taking out the guards.  So that adds a boring time sink at the end of every mission while you clean up the leftovers, with the time pressure most likely already gone.  To me that looks like making boring play optimal, so I see why they wouldn't want to do that, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense internally.

What is the deal with the HQ liberation missions?  It seems like something must be wrong, you always seem to have 1 second after hijacking to get off the ship, which is typically not possible.  Also... why are we hijacking a ship on its way to an enemy station, taking it over, then... crashing it into that same enemy station? According to what I've read ingame, crashing ships into stations is not how one steals a station anyway.

From what I recall, stations have to be simultaneously attacked from outside and within to be taken over.  First, someone inside has to somehow prevent the station from shooting down the siege ship.  Second, the siege ship has to blast the station with EMP to crash its defense system (Although this doesn't prevent the station from shooting, so the inside guy has to do that... somehow).  Then, after the station's system is crashed, the inside man has to perform some kind of wiring switcharoo to cause the station's defense system to boot back up under the new faction's control.

But in the game, we just smash a ship into a seemingly random enemy station, which for some reason causes the HQ to switch to our side.  Clearly something isn't quite right here, during the mission the ship we're trying to hijack is supposedly headed for an enemy station (enemy to the HQ we're trying to take over).  That's why we have a time limit even before setting off an alarm.  But if we're flying away from the HQ, toward some random station, the longer we take to hijack the ship, the more time we should have to get back off it, right?

[Broseph Stalin]

Slipstream, Fire weapon, sidewinder in front of bullet, swap with enemy. Totally unnecessary but amusing.

[Criptfeind]

What is the deal with the HQ liberation missions?  It seems like something must be wrong, you always seem to have 1 second after hijacking to get off the ship, which is typically not possible.

It's very possible if you have a teleporter or even a lucky lay out, that last 0th second is pretty long. I've never been trapped on a crashing ship to be honest, I've sidewindered out, I've glitchtrapped the pilot out then swapped with him, I've slipstreamed out, one time I even walked out because there was simply a window close enough.

Also... why are we hijacking a ship on its way to an enemy station, taking it over, then... crashing it into that same enemy station? According to what I've read ingame, crashing ships into stations is not how one steals a station anyway.

From what I recall, stations have to be simultaneously attacked from outside and within to be taken over.  First, someone inside has to somehow prevent the station from shooting down the siege ship.  Second, the siege ship has to blast the station with EMP to crash its defense system (Although this doesn't prevent the station from shooting, so the inside guy has to do that... somehow).  Then, after the station's system is crashed, the inside man has to perform some kind of wiring switcharoo to cause the station's defense system to boot back up under the new faction's control.

But in the game, we just smash a ship into a seemingly random enemy station, which for some reason causes the HQ to switch to our side.  Clearly something isn't quite right here, during the mission the ship we're trying to hijack is supposedly headed for an enemy station (enemy to the HQ we're trying to take over).  That's why we have a time limit even before setting off an alarm.  But if we're flying away from the HQ, toward some random station, the longer we take to hijack the ship, the more time we should have to get back off it, right?

Kinda a flimsy justification for a slightly more dramatic mission I guess. I... THINK that the enemy ship we hijack is suppose to be a defense ship patrolling around the station to shoot down any siege ships that come after it. The time limit is until it's shift is over and another defense ship comes out to replace it I guess? So instead of sending our own siege ship after the place we have to subvert their ships for that use otherwise we'd get shot down. and that's why you only have 1-5 seconds, because it's patrolling right nearby their home base and you turn it in immediately. I've heard it's possible to fly the enemy ship away from the home base actually before you set course, and that gives you more time. Idk if that's the case, because I've never found it necessary.

[Damiac]

OK, I think I see what's happening here with the HQ liberations.

The mission to hijack the ship is highly random.  There's not necessarily a time limit at all, or there could be a relatively short time limit.  From the ones I've seen, when there's a time limit it's until the ship gets to the HQ. So in those cases, the longer the timer runs down, the less time you have at the end to escape.

If you set off an alarm, the ship also starts heading right for the HQ, and on non-timed missions it seems to just kinda hang out nearby, so you don't get much time here either.

Finally, when you do hijack the ship, you send it on a crash course into that HQ.  So the ship's destination is that HQ in almost all cases.

As for the 1 second timer upon hijacking, that seems to be a display bug. 

I was on a hijack mission with no mission timer.  The ship seemed to be flying a lazy circle a ways from the HQ.  In the process of hijacking, I caused an alarm, which gave me about 40 seconds.  I made it to the captain's seat with about 24 seconds remaining on the timer.  Before hijacking and setting the course, I paused and zoomed out.  I was a good way away from the HQ, 24 seconds seemed pretty reasonable.

I then hijacked the ship, set the course, then immediately paused and zoomed out.  I was at the same distance as before, only now the timer said 1 second.  I unpaused for a moment to observe the ship speed while zoomed out, it wasn't moving ultra fast or anything. There was no way I was going to hit the station in 1 second at the speed I was going, the 24 seconds from the alarm seemed closer to correct.

So I unpaused, and ran like hell to the nearest window (not that near either).  The timer counted down from 1 to 0 in about... 3 seconds?  I paused and zoomed out again, still quite a ways from the HQ, even though the timer says 0.  I continued running, for a lot more than 0 seconds, and jumped out the window.  The ship was about halfway to the station by now.  I caught myself with my pod, flew toward the station, when finally the ship hit, mission complete.

So what I think is happening here is that the dev has made a very simple math error.  I believe normally the timer displays work like this:
(Timer_Display = Elapsed_Mission_Time - Total_Mission_Time).  Where total mission time is either the mission timer or the alarm timer. This would mean the timer display is really a negative number, which seems odd, but it's the only way I can make sense of the HQ timer bug.

I think in the case of HQ missions, he somehow divided instead of subtracting.  This formula gives the same results, although it's different enough from the correct formula that I'm probably getting this slightly wrong.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That equation would be (Timer_Display = 1-(Elapsed_Mission_Time / Total_Mission_Time))

That equation would start giving a result of 1, (0/anything = 0, 1-0 = 1.)  As the elapsed time counts up, your result keeps going down.
(10/100 = 0.1, 1-0.1 = 0.9)

The other piece of the puzzle is that the timer display has no decimal places.  And I would guess that it's stored as an integer rather than a real number.  That would mean the result probably gets rounded or truncated, and since the timer seems to show 0 a lot longer than it shows 1, my guess is that it is truncating. If it were rounding I'd expect the 1 to last just as long as the 0.

I'm probably somewhat wrong on the specifics, but I think that's the general idea of what's going on there.