How are Air transport and amphibious TD different from other transport TF

[madmickey]

How are Air transport and amphibious TD different from other transport TF you can have LST and LCI in a transport TF and escort carriers in a transport TF. Or is all the purpose is just to autoselect. In the Marianas campaign you can not auto-select enough ships even though there is 3 CVE in port.

[gunnergoz]

As I understand it, Air Transport TF's are optimized with ships that do well ferrying aircraft that are not going to be flown from the TF, simply landed in boxes. Amphibious TF's default to vessels optimized for assault landings (LST's, LSD's and AP's.) While it is true that you can add a CVE to a transport convoy to provide CAP and perhaps some ASW patrols, that would not be an ideal solution. CVE's were historically used in task groups of 4 or more to give them a healthy sized air group to work with by pooling assets. And full-on Carrier TF's are optimized to carry the hurt to the enemy in the form of their massed and balanced air group mix. They also had the "legs" and logistical stamina to stay and fight several rounds of combat with a foe before needing to replenish. CVE's were not built for air efforts of that intensity and tempo.

The short answer is, build a TF that is optimized for what you want it to do...don't thow in a bit of everything just in case it might prove useful.

BTW, I would go easy on the "autoselect" feature and would suggest you can do better yourself and learn more in the process. Experiment a bit with the tutorial, by building TF's with what's there and see what they can accomplish. You don't need to play it out, just set up some scenarios with different TF's to invade or provide CAP and see what happens with them.