Actors vs. components

There is a way to spawn an actor and set some parameters before the construction script is ran. In C++ instead of calling UWorld::SpawnActor, you would call UWorld::SpawnActorDeferred, set your parameters and then call AActor::FinishSpawning on the created actor. The construction scripts will only run when FinishSpawning is called. Here is an example of deferred spawning:



		// Spawn and initialize the actor
		const FTransform SpawnTransform(SpawnRot, SpawnLoc);
		ACombatCharacter* CombatChar = GetWorld()->SpawnActorDeferred<ACombatCharacter>(CharClass, SpawnTransform);
		CombatChar->Identity = Spawn->Identity;
		CombatChar->FinishSpawning(SpawnTransform);


You could try making a subclass of ChildActorComponent, which does deferred spawning and sets those parameters in time.