I had posted this on another forum and a number of people encouraged me to post here as well, since this gun still has so much confusion around it. I’m not sure this will actually clear up and confusion, but here’s the very long info post based on my way too long testing:
This is not the 10,000,000th post about why is the Night Hawkins not showing x3, or why is it not doing fire/cryo, or about how there are a bunch of versions. I’ve seen them all, and I decided to spend some time with this awesome little SMG trying to actually understand more about what it does and when, and hopefully dispel some of the misinformation that goes around.
This will be a long post, So I’ll put the summary here, and only the crazy people can read my full notes, or refer to them later, or link the next 100 posts about how someone’s Night Hawkins is broken back here.
Note: I’ve made a few edits based on feedback/observations from others and some additional testing and will continue to update if I get new info. I don’t claim to know everything about this gun 
Summaries :
Myth: There are fire Night Hawkins and cryo Night Hawkins
Fact: All Night Hawkins do cryo during the day and fire at night. Some planets don’t follow logic when it comes to day/night (details below)
Myth: There is a x3 Night Hawkins, and a x1 Night Hawkins and a x2 Night Hawkins.
Fact: There’s only one Night Hawkins, the same gun can show any of these three numbers, depending on where/when you first log in.
In general, if you log in in a “night” it will show x3, if you log in during “day” (see below for day/night on different planets. This will not change during your session. It will change if you log out and log in under different conditions.
The x2 is tied to a couple zones where the gun is extra weird (see Oddity #6 below). It also ocassionally drops as a x2 from Demoskaggen
Bottom line: Ignore what it says. Do not throw away a Night Hawkins because of the multiplier on the card, The card won’t update during play as the mode changes from cryo to fire, but the gun will work fine (mostly, again, see Oddity #6). When you log in under different circumstances it will show a different number.
Myth: The number of projectiles change from day to night
Fact: This is actually true, but it’s complicated. The gun always consumes 1 ammo, but does actually change projectiles. However since they are so tightly grouped and move fast and show a single damage number, it’s hard to see. If you freeze and zoom in at night you can see multiple red/orange bullet traces.
Myth: My Night Hawkins is broken or bugged
Fact: It’s not, it works fine, or at least according to its own rules as documented here. One thing not mentioned above is that it always makes the cryo “puff” day or night, so if you aren’t looking at the damage numbers (bluish white cryo, kinda yellow orange fire) it’s easy to be mistaken.
If you are on PS4 you can see the lights on the controller change depending on the element.
I have noticed a few times that when I load a game or zone at night it will shoot cryo. This either fixes itself after a short time or through reloading, I haven’t been able to figure out the exact conditions for this, but it seems to go away consistently within a mag or two.
Time of Day by Planet:
Full disclosure, I didn’t sit around and fire every hour of every day, or in every zone. Take this as a general guide based on observations during testing and looking at the sky.
Pandora : Day starts around 6:30, ends around 18:00. 24 hour cycle of ~32 minutes. (Special Note: In Devil’s Razor and Konrad’s Hold gun will show x2 if you load in that zone, all times of day)
Promethea : Weird. Midday periods are around 0:00, 6:00, and 18:00. Night more than day. Skywell 27 appears to always be night. 24 hour cycle of ~32 minutes.
Athenas: Day starts around 5:00, ends around 15:00, 24 hour cycle of ~32 minutes.
Eden 6: Day starts around 6:00, ends around 18:00. 24 hour cycle of ~32 minutes.
Nekrotafeyo: Day starts around 7:00, ends around 18:00, 24 hour cycle of ~5 minutes.
Sanctuary: Always day
Heck: Always night
Midnight Cairn: Always day, despite always being midnight, and always being dark 
Slaughterstar 3000: Time doesn’t seem to move here. I zoned in a bunch of times and the time varied some, but it was always around midnight.
Handsome Jackpot: Appears to always be day in some areas (Spendopticon, Impound Deluxe, VIP Tower) and always night in others (Compactor, Jack’s Secret).
Trials: Always start at night (midnight) and day starts at 8:00 (which is about 10 minutes into the trial). I only tested Discipline and Cunning, I didn’t feel like running the other ones with no build and not even a slim chance of a nice class mod.
Details no one will or should read:
First, my testing conditions. Level 50 Zane, unspeced (no points spent, no action skills), no class mod, no artifact. Only bonus is 12.82% Gun Damage from guardian rank. Normal mode, no Mayhem (to avoid modifiers) Time of Day info taken from photo mode.
I grabbed 4 different Night Hawkins I had handy. Note that while they are anointed, I am at no time using a skill that would trigger said anointment.
392 Arctic Tamed burst/semi (Digi-Clone Ammo regen anoint)
436 Arctic Dauntless burst/semi (SNTL Cryo anoint)
458 Arctic Tamed burst/semi (SNTL Fire Rate Anoint)
211 Arctic Reflexive (lvl 41) full/burst (no anoint)
Oddity #1 : at 2:00 in Sanctuary when I started the test, 436, 458, and 211 showed x3, 392 which I pulled off my wall showed single. (There were 3 more in my bank, all showed x3)
Oddity #2: 2:00 in Sanctuary all damage to test dummy is cryo (whitish blue damage numbers) Conclusion: It’s always day in Sanctuary, regardless of time.
Oddity #3: 2:00 in Sanctuary, no x3 hits apparent, all guns with semi auto behaving the same (though damage numbers are when firing in semi mode are a little odd as they don’t match the expected bonus, 496, 552, 579.) full auto damage number seems about right (242), but fires single round with quick trigger press. All guns fire 4 rounds in burst. Damage numbers for first shot lower than in semi (451, 501, 527, subsequent shots have higher damage due to c-c-combo guardian skill). Damage from 211 consistent at 242. Conclusion: x3 on card does not have any effect on damage, only whether it is in cryo or fire mode. Gun has slightly higher damage in semi mode.
Moved to Meridian Metroplex: TOD: 19:06 (day). No change in that 3 guns show x3, one shows x1.
Shot my monowheel in semi/full. All shots cryo, damage numbers different than target dummy (596, 662, 695). When I switched to the 4th gun it swapped to fire damage, time 19:58.
Shot monowheel again in semi/full. 1043, 1158, 1216, 509. For both cryo and fire tests I waited for any effect to fade between shots. Conclusion: There are no extra projectiles on fire mode, but damage is higher (though not always x3).
Oddity #4: Moved to testing burst fire. Time 22:00. Gun shooting cryo again in 4 shot burst mode. (conclusion below)
Oddity #5: I go away for a drink, cause I’m confused and come back. TOD 1:40. Guns still show the same mix of x3 and 1 (I’ll stop mentioning this unless it changes). Go back to the 4 round burst test, guns are doing fire again. First shot damage numbers are again lower than in semi, but higher than the test dummy. (difference due to cryo being more effective against armor)
TOD: 5:30, gun is back to cryo. Do a single shot damage test, 596, 662, 695, 291. Conclusion: The practice dummy is kind of worthless.
Decide to go out and kill a few bad guys to see if the damage to an NPC is similar to shooting the vehicle, kind of hard to test on low level NPCs, but all of a sudden the gun switches back to fire. TOD 7:30. I start playing with the slider and notice that the day night cycle on Prometha is very short. 0:00 - Day, 1:30 - Night, 6:00 - Day, 7:30 - Night etc. So the days are short here. Conclusion: Don’t test the Night Hawkin on Promethea. Also night varies by planet.
Fast Travel to Ascension Bluff. TOD 1:00, looks like night. Gun does fire. Quit to loading screen and log in again, now all 4 guns show single shot. TOD 5:00. Still doing fire.
Go kill the Skrakk and with the 458 getting hits for about 2k on him (non crit). Run around for awhile, by 7:00 back to cryo.
Reload game again, still around 7:00, go fight the Skrakk again, doing about 6-700 on non crits with cryo. Conclusion: The x3 damage isn’t exact, but at least against flesh it seems about right. (Reason: fire flesh bonuses push damage higher, confirmed against a shielded enemy)
Oddity #6: Devil’s Razor and Konrad’s Hold. This is probably the weirdest behavior. If you load your game in either of these two zones, it will show x2 day or night. But it gets weirder from there.
If it’s day when you log in, the gun in single shot (as expected) and I got the same damage numbers on my monowheel test as I got previously (596/662 for the first two guns, I didn’t test all 4). Waited until night and got 695/772 (vs expected 1043/1158) in fire mode.
Quit and load the game at night, now getting 1043/1158 as expected. Wait for day, it goes to 1191/1324 cryo (vs 596/662). Zone to Sandblast scar, it’s 596/662. Go back to Devil’s Razor and still 596/662.
I tested zoning to see if this persists, and it does for a bit. At first I had it in what a called nerfed night mode, and I went to Konrads and back with no change, went to Sandblast with no change, then came back to Devil’s Razor it stopped working after a few shots. Sometimes when you are in nerfed fire mode even quitting and reloading doesn’t fix it, but if you travel to someplace like Sanctuary and back, it does fix it.
Tried again with what I will call buffed cryo and went to Konrads, came back to DR, went to Konrads, came back again and then it went back to normal cryo.
So while I had some luck zoning, I tried for hours to get the cryo boost to work in a place like the Takedown or Slaughter Shaft, even zoning directly into the Slaughter Shaft from Konrads, but it never worked for me.
Conclusion: Man is this gun weird. No idea why these couple zones work so differently, but it does mean if you are using it here, you really want to load at night (fast traveling to Sanctuary and back is the way to change time of day, quitting to the character screen doesn’t help). You get the standard night performance, but bonus day performance. If you load in during the day you get standard day performance and a penalty at night.
Additional Conclusion: In these two zones, it actually does have a x2 factor. If you start your game at night you get x3 night and x2 cryo, if you start your game during the day, you get x1 cryo and x2 fire. Anyone confused yet?
this is perhaps the gun that has confused the most people in the Borderlands
