When I'm defending, the game never allows me to chose which units are destroyed, it always chooses for me. I have verified the setting "Assign Hits from Defense Profile" is toggled off. I've tried toggling it on and back off, restarting the game, everything, nothing is working.

I decided that since the game is forcing me to use this option, I would at least customize my defense profiles to make more sense, i.e., so that a fighter isn't destroyed before a bomber when defending. Well that isn't working either. The game has the Defense Profiles locked and it will not allow me to change anything.

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.