I have it reliably working as it should now. I ended up rebuilding the projectile and aoe BPs, nothing really changed except for how to AOE is brought into the world. Now using a Niagara system instead of legacy emitters. System must spawn as attached otherwise VFX won’t run reliably, when it does run it will loop on infinite regardless of settings on the NS file and the “spawn system” node.
Now the actor itself will not be destroyed until after a delay that is set. Ensuring time for the VFX to finish. This is because making the system spawn as attached ties it to the projectile actor. It’s weird and I don’t like it but it works.
For spawning in the AOE:
The actor spawning just wasn’t working. Spent enough time on it and decided to just add the BP as a component that overlaps everything. The component is initially hidden. Upon revealing it during run time, it collects the array of contained actors and the end goal is met.
I might make a YT tutorial on this because it was quite the ride
Cheers