I'm trying to make sense of why hotshot copilot is of any use at all.

If the defender still must roll dice and still must spend focus....then I think I see why you want to pair gunner with hotshot copilot.

Yes, that's correct. Rolling defence dice is not optional, regardless of the attacker's results.

Just for clarity, you don't need "eye" results to spend focus. you just have to have the trigger (attacking/defending).

Correct. Per the FAQ for Garven Dreis (page 12 IIRC) you can spend a focus token when you have 0 eye results, so with hotshot, you must.

For extra fun, put him on Young (Old) Han Solo. Miss that first shot on purpose!
Pair with Jan Ors for extra salt in the opponents wounds on that second shot.

Though I will say when I was playing last night and using an autocannon paired with an accuracy correcter I just looked at my opponent and asked "do you really want to roll the dice every time?"

By rule, yes, you have to roll the dice. You cannot attack and choose to miss, you cannot be attacked and choose to take all the damage without trying to evade if you have dice. But in casual play there are times where the results of the dice won't matter so you don't have to go through the ceremony if both players agree.

50 minutes ago, xbeaker said:

Though I will say when I was playing last night and using an autocannon paired with an accuracy correcter I just looked at my opponent and asked "do you really want to roll the dice every time?"

By rule, yes, you have to roll the dice. You cannot attack and choose to miss, you cannot be attacked and choose to take all the damage without trying to evade if you have dice. But in casual play there are times where the results of the dice won't matter so you don't have to go through the ceremony if both players agree.

In casual play, you can flip the table and scream, "Death Star," if both players agree (or not, I guess).

While the defender must "roll" dice when attacked I hope most of would accept foregoing the actual rolling when absolutely nothing matters about the roll. You roll an attack and come up with no hits/crits after modifiers your opponent may still need to "roll" but if there's nothing special that can/will happen I see nothing wrong with skipping the formality and saving a little time.

Unless you're on Vassal, in which case, please do, it takes no time at all and it keeps the stats right for the dice luck calculator.

As far as being practical, most all players understand both when it is actually pointless to go through the motion of rolling dice, and even so that all triggers regarding rolling of dice (even if not actually rolled) still occur. So in the OP's example, there are a good many players that would just not roll their dice and would instead just "spend" their focus per the Hotshot card effect as if the dice were rolled. You're free to insist that the dice get rolled, and they are free to look at you like you're a bit crazy as they roll those dice. Hotshot forces the token to be spent regardless.

Me personally I generally do roll the dice even in pointless situations, since I pick them up anyways when the attacker picks theirs up. It is just the difference between rolling or setting them back down then, so I just roll them and sweep them away without hardly looking.

1 hour ago, Joe Censored said:

As far as being practical, most all players understand both when it is actually pointless to go through the motion of rolling dice, and even so that all triggers regarding rolling of dice (even if not actually rolled) still occur. So in the OP's example, there are a good many players that would just not roll their dice and would instead just "spend" their focus per the Hotshot card effect as if the dice were rolled. You're free to insist that the dice get rolled, and they are free to look at you like you're a bit crazy as they roll those dice. Hotshot forces the token to be spent regardless.

Me personally I generally do roll the dice even in pointless situations, since I pick them up anyways when the attacker picks theirs up. It is just the difference between rolling or setting them back down then, so I just roll them and sweep them away without hardly looking.

Amusingly, in the same game I mentioned above I took a shot with my primary weapon, 5 dice (ghost at range 1) and rolled ALL BLANKS. I couldn't believe it, so my opponent did just that.. rolled all his defense dice then swept them off the table.... about 2 seconds before I could remind him that I still had the accuracy corrector, so I did net 2 hits. hahaha.

46 minutes ago, xbeaker said:

Amusingly, in the same game I mentioned above I took a shot with my primary weapon, 5 dice (ghost at range 1) and rolled ALL BLANKS. I couldn't believe it, so my opponent did just that.. rolled all his defense dice then swept them off the table.... about 2 seconds before I could remind him that I still had the accuracy corrector, so I did net 2 hits. hahaha.

Oh don't get started on that. If he rolled Defense that must have meant you were done modifying your attack dice and thus there was nothing that Accuracy Corrector could do for you. So if you rolled back to the Modify Attack step then he would have gotten an Roll Defense step where the first one obvious didn't happen. To put it another way if you netted 2 hits it should have been after his dice were actually looked at and compared instead of just saying "oh, you didn't have any defense? I guess my attack goes through."

12 hours ago, StevenO said:

Oh don't get started on that. If he rolled Defense that must have meant you were done modifying your attack dice and thus there was nothing that Accuracy Corrector could do for you. So if you rolled back to the Modify Attack step then he would have gotten an Roll Defense step where the first one obvious didn't happen. To put it another way if you netted 2 hits it should have been after his dice were actually looked at and compared instead of just saying "oh, you didn't have any defense? I guess my attack goes through."

Wow.. holy high horse. If you must know, I rolled 5 blanks laughed, he picked his dice up went "well here's my defence" rolled them and swept them. I never had a second to mention the accutacy corrector. I reminded him and he laughed and said "oh s***, sorry wasn't even thinking, I guess my defense DOES matter" and rerolled. As I said before it was a friendly game. And when he re-rolled he did net 1 evade to bring the damage to 1. I didn't say I denied him a defense roll, only that he rolled and swept before I had a chance to remind him about the AC.

2 hours ago, xbeaker said:

Wow.. holy high horse. If you must know, I rolled 5 blanks laughed, he picked his dice up went "well here's my defence" rolled them and swept them. I never had a second to mention the accutacy corrector. I reminded him and he laughed and said "oh s***, sorry wasn't even thinking, I guess my defense DOES matter" and rerolled. As I said before it was a friendly game. And when he re-rolled he did net 1 evade to bring the damage to 1. I didn't say I denied him a defense roll, only that he rolled and swept before I had a chance to remind him about the AC.

Sorry but you may know how some people get with "missed opportunities" including those which shouldn't have been missed.

I'd also say you netted 1 hit/damage. Your gross attack roll may have yielded two hits but after he rolled defense and apparently cancelled one of them you only netted one hit. The difference between the gross and the net can be very important; in business it is how a company can "make millions" (which is likely gross income) but still lose money (net income) on that.

7 hours ago, StevenO said:

Sorry but you may know how some people get with "missed opportunities" including those which shouldn't have been missed.

I'd also say you netted 1 hit/damage. Your gross attack roll may have yielded two hits but after he rolled defense and apparently cancelled one of them you only netted one hit. The difference between the gross and the net can be very important; in business it is how a company can "make millions" (which is likely gross income) but still lose money (net income) on that.

Fair enough, just don't attack me like I took advantage unfairly. Especially when I said it was a casual game. If it were a game that 'mattered' we would not be so flipent about rolles and either way I would never ignore an an opponents fair right of defence, even on a misunderstanding.

2 minutes ago, xbeaker said:

Fair enough, just don't attack me like I took advantage unfairly. Especially when I said it was a casual game. If it were a game that 'mattered' we would not be so flipent about rolles and either way I would never ignore an an opponents fair right of defence, even on a misunderstanding.

Apologies again. Although I see how it can be read as a personal attack it was intended to stop any of that "missed opportunities" BS before it began. All the rest of it is only based on the situation as presented without consideration for the people on either side of it. It may not be a comfort but if I was attacking anything it's the idea and not the person behind the idea. I may not always do a great job separating the two but then there are also people who seem to think that any disagreement with them is actually an attack against them instead of just being against whatever was presented. I ran into far too many of those when commenting about people's "alternative rules/new additions" presented for various RPGs. Just because the idea is horrible doesn't mean the person presenting it is.

On 7/14/2017 at 10:43 PM, xbeaker said:

Amusingly, in the same game I mentioned above I took a shot with my primary weapon, 5 dice (ghost at range 1) and rolled ALL BLANKS. I couldn't believe it, so my opponent did just that.. rolled all his defense dice then swept them off the table.... about 2 seconds before I could remind him that I still had the accuracy corrector, so I did net 2 hits. hahaha.

Oh that's nothing. I once took a range 1 target-locked shot with the Ghost (in a World's game, not less) ... five blanks. Spent the TL ... four blanks and a focus, with no focus token.

It's X-wing -- anything can happen, and usually does.

Yes.

Whenever I am attacked, I roll defence dice.

As noted, it's only really going to matter if you have a trigger that may apply to the defence roll, but you might. I can't currently think of a card which lets you trade defence dice results for something (in the way R3 astromech lets you trade attack dice results for something) but it's not an unlikely card to see in the future.

Hotshot Copilot is the most common reason you'd roll defence when there were no meaningful red results.

On 7/14/2017 at 10:32 PM, StevenO said:

If he rolled Defense that must have meant you were done modifying your attack dice and thus there was nothing that Accuracy Corrector could do for you.

Wrong.

Per the rules you can't roll dice until both the defender and attacker have had an opportunity to modify the dice. If the defender doesn't give the attacker the chance and rolls dice too soon, that's his fault and not a missed opportunity.