Mode,

This feature (not being able to choose losses) is as designed. The Defense Profiles work, but in a mixed force (which initially is mainly Allies) the games uses the Defense Profile of the Ally owning the territory/sea zone being attacked. This isn't documented so far as I know, but that's how it appears to work.

Note you can set some 'default when game starts' profiles, which can be useful especially for Japan R1 in Pacific, where you want subs to submerge and CVs to be taken as losses before fighters (just turn 1 tho).

Thanks for the reply, bravehome.

So I think you're saying is it's by design that Defense Profiles are forced enabled and there is no way to disable them, or turn them off. I find this to be a poor decision in game design if so.

The Defense Profile option also seems to imply that I should be able to customize it in some way, however, this isn't working either. I'm stuck with the Default setting that the game gives me and it cannot be changed.

I don't know...maybe it's not broken, but if not, then I would consider this very poor choices in game design. Part of the table-top rules of this game is the defender is supposed to be able to choose which pieces they lose, and there are very strategic reasons to do so.

I created my own defense profiles where I set transports as first to be destroyed. The game did NOT honor those rules. I verified that the game I created was using those defense profiles. But yet, transports were the LAST to go even after cruisers and destroyers. Meaning that it was using the Lowest value units defense profiles even though I told the game NOT to.
IMO I think that they are broken.