Question on support forces

[cabalamat]

If I switch off Support Forces on the preferences, does that mean I just get less ships, or does it mean the forces under my control in the battle may be larger?

Recently i was playing a game as France and was defending a convoy against Germany. the battle generator gave me 4 of my 7 BBs to do this and put the rest in a support force. The Germans heavily outnumbered me, so I lost, but If I had had those 3 extra BBs + escorts I would have had a chance of winning. (In fact the game credited me as winner as I had destroyed more of his tonnage than he had mine.)

[JagdFlanker]

from RtW1 i found with 'support forces' my available ships were split into a group controlled by me and a group controlled by the ai

i have no idea if this is still the case in RtW2, but i still keep 'support forces' unchecked

that is not to say support forces didn't come in handy when i did have them available, but when i only had a few ships in the seazone i felt i'd rather have the best chance of controlling all my ships instead of them getting split up into ships under my control and ships controlled independently by the ai