A friend and I were playing last night and could not decide if her pilot ability happens after the defender modifies or before.

For reference:

"before the neutralize results step" is after all standard modifications by both players. This is similar timing to when a Reinforce token checks for its trigger.

Nitro is correct. "before X" (X in this case being Neutralize Results Step) always implicitly also means "after everything else that normally comes before X" which would include all standard modifications here.

Here's the full order:

• 1. Declare Target
  • a. Measure Range
  • b. Choose Weapon
  • c. Declare Defender
  • d. Pay Costs
• 2. Attack Dice
  • a. Roll Attack Dice
  • b. Modify Attack Dice ( defender first, then attacker )
• 3. Defense Dice
  • a. Roll Defense Dice
  • b. Modify Defense Dice ( attacker first, then defender )
• Crack Shot and Seventh Sister Happen Here. These cancel evade results before they can neutralize hit or crit results.
• 4. Neutralize Results: During this step, pairs of attack and defense dice neutralize each other. Dice are neutralized in the following order:
  • a. Pairs of [hit] and [evade] results are canceled.
  • b. Pairs of [crit] and [evade] results are canceled.
  • The attack hits if at least one [hit] or [crit] result remains uncanceled; otherwise, the attack misses.
  • Reinforce Happens Here. If there are more than 1 hit or crit result remaining (that is, two or more hit or crit results), an Evade result will be added to neutralize one, as per 4a. or 4b.
• 5. Deal Damage
• 6. Aftermath

Here's something I just noticed about the Aftermath step (irrelevant to this question). The Defender triggers "after attacking/after defending" abilities before the Attacker does, and it no longer matters who is the first player. Valen Rudor gets his action before Whisper gets her Evade token, for example. This is a change from 1e I hadn't noticed before. All non-Bonus Attack abilities happen first, however. But Dengar-Pilot will always shoot before, say, Bossk-Gunner.

Thanks everyone.

Since the FLGS was closing soon we just rolled a die for it hit/crit during attackers modification blank/focus after defenders modification; And we rolled a blank so we ended up playing correctly.