Hi,
Creating an actor reference variable gives the user a nice object picker in the details panel.
Now, creating an component reference variable gives the user the option to select one from the content browser, which does not make that much sense. Is there any way to currently assign a component to a reference field? Or if not, maybe it could be a cool new feature.
The current workflow is either one of these 2:
Option 1) -Create a base actor class which has the component. This makes sure the actor knows about the component, but makes all the components less abstract and almost useless, since we reference an actor anyway.
Option 2) -Make it an actor field, and loop through its components to check for the type needed.
You can see how this gives awkward blueprints. In C++ I checked it PostEditChangeProperty and threw out an error if it does not have the correct type, but this is hacky as well.
An object picker which does the get component of type would be a great solution to support making components more abstract.