First of all, I will try to put all together.

Bright Hope: while defending against an attack that does not target your rear hull zone, before you suffer damage reduce the total damage by 1.

APT: deal 1 face up damage card to the defender.

ACM: each hull zone adjacent to the defending hull zone suffers 1 damage.

Said this, my thoughts: bright hope has a curious timing, it works while defendig but before you suffer damage (in order to be precise). As far as I understand the attack it would work after brace token takes place so if we brace to 1, we take 0 damage. Of course, Bright Hope doesn't have brace and all this mean nothing but what happen with crits as APT or ACM? I think APT works normally cause no damage is done, APT gives damage card and I think the difference had been argued in other threads. But ACM says damage, not damage card. Bright Hope would suffer damage so would the title work here? What would be the total damage then? If it works and bright hopre would reduce just 1 of the "2" ACM damage who choose the hull zone that will not suffer damage?

The easiest answer I can find is that Bright Hope just work after crits and when we are dealing the damages 1 by 1. There is not a "suffering damage" specific step of the attack, but we can infer it from the order the rules describe the step 5. I think this cause is the only way I can put sense on the interaction with ACM but in these cases I try to follow the RAW but with this I can't.

This is just my guess, but I think you've got it. It stops damage during the damage faze but nothing against critical effects

Correct. Damage and Damage Cards are very distinct things in the rules.

"Damage" is not calculated until after critical effects have been allocated. "Damage" to a ship, is a sum of all "HIT" and "CRIT" symbols showing on the dice.

It is damage that is reduced by half, by a Brace.

And there is indeed a 'suffer damage' step.

Its the last component of step 5, where you assign 'damage' to the ship, one point at a time.

So yes, unless you Scatter, a Black Crit with APTs will immediately do a Face up Damage card... ACMs will deal damage to the adjacent zones, etc, etc, etc.

Then you calculate up how many hits and crits there are, to get the damage amount.

You would have that amount at this point if you had a brace, but you're Bright Hope, so you don't...

Then you reduce it by 1, for Bright Hope.

Then you assign the remaining damage to the Ship, one point at a time. To the defending hull zone, as you don't have a redirect , either...

Boom.

Ok so on Bright Hope (a little pain in the ass ship), I had this come up:

Bright hope already has a damage card. We are Playing Precision Strike. Bomber can't get to the rear but can shoot at a shielded side. Can the bomber spend a hit to flip the damage card? I believe so since this is before the damage step.

Yes.

Precision strike "Spend" happens in the Modify Dice effects step, It is before even Defense Tokens are spent...

Ok so on Bright Hope (a little pain in the ass ship), I had this come up:

Bright hope already has a damage card. We are Playing Precision Strike. Bomber can't get to the rear but can shoot at a shielded side. Can the bomber spend a hit to flip the damage card? I believe so since this is before the damage step.

And that's exactly why I hate precision strike!