Delay nodes don't fire while paused despite "Tick even when paused" enabled, unless Tick node is present

Have seen quite a few reports of delays not working properly while the game is paused, a good explanation of which someone posted here Delay not working while game is paused - Blueprint - Unreal Engine Forums

I recently ran into this while doing some pause UI screens, where I had some delays in an Actor blueprint which weren’t getting executed even though the actor was set to “Tick even when paused”.

Starting with a blank project, I was able to work out that even though the actor wanted to be ticked when paused, the delay nodes still wouldn’t complete unless there was a Tick node in the blueprint. It could be an empty node, but it just had to be there.

I’m guessing this is some kind of “canEverTick” optimisation that only affects delays while paused (since delays fire fine without a Tick node normally).

Can provide a sample project if you need, but is pretty simple to replicate.

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