Blueprint to control Mesh/Blueprint/Actor?

I’m looking for a confirmation over design.
I’ve got some actors on the store. Mostly meshes assemblies in blueprint (tanks and turrets)
My natural approach to control them was to create a “behavioral” blueprint that would reference these actors, get control of relevant (tagged) parts and control them.
Then I would create a child of that blueprint and vary actors/weapon effect.
It seemed straightforward and I managed it using classes reference for effects, instantiated at will, and and child actors that are set placing the behavioral blueprint. And it’s not pretty. I’m getting hundreds of child actors in the editor, it’s a mess.

It looks I went backward the UE4 way and I should instead have created a “controller” blueprint that has then to be added to each of these actors.

Could I have a confirmation of this ? (I’m not enjoying the prospect of having to re-create the blueprint just to omit the components.)
Thanks in advance.

Yes you need AIController that controls the actors via behavior trees. pawn on it own is like soulless body it made in control but it needs a “soul” that controls it which is controller, and this can be either AI or Player Controller for player to control.

Note that blueprint is only class and you don’t need to create one for each of you tank and turnets, only one for each of behavior type. Since you creating tanks that can be controlled by same way you need only one to control them all.

You also saying you have them on the “Store”. If you selling assets then i think you can leave out AI stuff and leave decisions what to do on that matter to the client as controller need to be fit to game they making. Even if you just gonna distribute skeletal meshes of tanks developers will still find way to use them.