The problem with USB-A has been mentioned before:
I recall reading elsewhere that the problem is not that the USB-A card itself is active, but that it makes a connection between some pins on the port, showing that a device is “plugged in”, where the USB-C protocol then requires some polling on the laptop side to see if the device has any requests.
This electronic activity does seem to persist when the laptop is s2idle or deep suspended, when (percentage-wise) it starts to be quite significant. I haven’t spotted a follow-up from @Kieran_Levin on whether they’ve been able to find possible mitigations in firmware. For now: get 4x USB-C; plus any expansion cards you’d like. If you’re in a situation where you want to maximize battery, you can use the cards as dongles (and they’re competitively priced for that). I wish I’d known when I ordered.