conflagration between expantab and softtabstop

in setting softtabstop to 4, things are fine, unless and until I want to
start entering actual tab characters in a module which gets parsed
using tabs as delimiters -- my thought was that by setting noexpandtab
any time I hit the tab key in insert mode, a tab would be inserted

that is not what happens

with softtabstop set to 4 and set noexpandtab, in insert mode on a new
line, when I enter a single character followed by a tab, 3 spaces are
inserted

to repeat, even though I have set noexpandtab, 3 spaces are inserted
when I hit the tab key

I find this unexpected -- history dictates when I am having unexpected
results it is because I don't fully understand what I am doing, so
please, ppl, educate me -- why are spaces inserted with noexpandtab
set?

do I have to set softtabstop to zero whenever I want noexpandtab?

would not the expected behavior be to honor noexpandtab?

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