Plainly said I don't want to replace the BOs I've invested in so much.

Rare BOs can teach their rare abilities to any other BO. However traits cannot be taught. Are we doomed to see tons of BOs with rare imba traits that trap us into having to constantly switch BOs?

Would Picard trade Data for a superior Bridge Officer with a rare ability? I doubt it. At the same time I don't want to gimp myself by sticking with crappy BOs.

Yes that is entirely the point of the Bridger Officer system. It's an entire crafting system You have more then enough extra officer slots to build a BO to you likeing. Or design an uber one that you will trade (transfer) to another player. Another aspect is that you don't have to use the exact same set of Bridge Officers on you ship and on your away team. I have some BOs that do double duty. But I other other which I use only in an away team, and other which are soley used for my ship.

So far I've had a I've swapped out 4 skills from officers that I have received as rewards and those I've bought. I've have one Engineer which I've developed since the beginner of headstart our for my Borg Bridge Officer. The rare traits I wanted, but also the mix of skills is a as good or better then the initial Engineer. And I've used one of the BO candidated I've earned from leveling to train my Vulcan Science Officers in Viral Matrix III (a very rare skill). I didn't like the skill mix of the candidate. and I like my Vulcan Science Officers (she's cute ).

But are rare traits ever flat out better? Like will a common Bajoran BO have worse traits than a rare Bajoran BO? Not talking moves.

Unfortunately, yes. Rare BOs have "Superior" traits, in the gamut from, say, Basic Aggression -> Aggression -> Superior Aggression. Rares are guaranteed to have one "superior" trait, Very Rares are guaranteed to have two. You won't find these "Superior" traits on ordinary BOs, nor can you train them onto existing BOs. Thus, the system currently forces us to either stick with underpowered BOs, or abandon them along with all of our investment in them whenever someone with better stats shows up.

And as an extra middle finger, the skills and traits listed on BO candidates before they reach your assignments tab will change between your initial viewing and their appearance in your assignments screen. I suspect it has to do with the BO "item" not yet existing in the rewards box, so it's not been finalized. Thus, there's no point in picking a BO based on what you see in the mission rewards. Just pick a class if you have a choice, and go from there.

It is that last paragraph that seals the "F U Players!!!" on this poop system. Pliny really summed up why I hate this system.

So I have been investing myself in this cool bridge officer, spending scads of points on them to make them better and then all of a sudden I get a really neat new bridge officer. I cannot untrain the points from the one I have been investing in to get them back and use them on the new officer. I cannot be assured that when I recruit them they will be what I saw in the first place (traits changing? WTF!?!?!), so I often get something "other than advertised". The most infuriating is that this seems to then also feed into the max/capped skill point deal. This is so wrong on so many levels and is SO broken.

they lied on their application and when it came time for them to do what they said they could do, turns out they cant and you have to fire them

The Max/capped skill point deal is for captains only... you'll continue to gain skill points for you BOffs even at max level.

In your example I think its positive that Data was the rare BO that replaced someone else =D

The dude is a walking computer...like the perfect science/ops officer.

This is HORRIBLE!

EVERYONE MUST PROTEST! TAKE THE PITCH FORKS AND TORCHES! I DON'T WANT TO SCREW MY BOS!!!