Agreed Mr. Frood. When I overbuild transports, it’s never primarily because I intend to throw them away. I might be forced to if the enemy is taking a risk and succeeds. I usually try to overbuilds transports to the point where the Luftwaffe just go “eff it, too many of the buggers” or “damn, even if I did land a few hits, it wouldn’t interrupt their shuck at all because they could just lose the extra tran and sub and absorb a hit on the BB…wahhh!!” and don’t attempt to attack, which means some IPCs saved on building a carrier/using fighters to guard, and also the force multiplier thing is awesome, as well.
As far as taking hits on trans, it really has to do with how hard the enemy dice hit, and also if the opponent was being technical about battles or not. If the dice hit hard, you’re just going to have to take it on tran, because otherwise your entire navy will be wiped out the next round at little cost. But if the dice hit average or light, you can lose the extra tran and maybe one of your dest so that your shuck isn’t interrupted at all, and rely on average rolling to kill enough attackers to discourage future rounds of attack.
Technically defenders have to choose casualties before rolling defense, but some people might be lazy and roll both at once so you have the advantage of knowing how the battle came out, which makes it a little easier to assign casualties.
