I was wondering:
Is it better to leave default cameras (and spring arms) on pawns, even if they will be controlled by AI, BUT you may want to be able to control or observe them at some point.
Or would it be better to remove these components and put them back in when actually needed (like when becoming possessed).
Does it make a difference performance-wise?
It shouldnt matter as long as you arent making those components do anything in runtime.
Well, the thing is I dont’t know what the engine does with them at runtime automatically.
I would expect that a horde of 100 zerglings, zombies or whatever with spring arms attached will do a lot of raycasting every tick.
Unless the engine is smart enough to know that none of the components attached to the spring arms (just the cameras that is) need to be updated and skips updating the spring arms, too.
You can disable collision test for the spring arm if you have it enabled by default. That would cost the most performance i think. You can easily enable it when the pawn is possessed anyway. You can also enable/disable tick for components.