I managed to fix the scale issue by seting unit scale to 0.01 and then applying a scale by 100 to everything, then to get the rig to cooperate i needed to rename to root and remove one node. then when I imported with ue4mannequin as the skeleton it didnt complain but unfortunately the preview of my animation blueprint was messed up(I will try and edit this with some screens later but itchio was refusing to let me post with them) 
this is the last step in getting my custom characters in so I will keep working on this and post updates in this thread as I have any.
