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So, just looking through the origin path in Rogue trader and trying to make a character with the most forbidden lore skills for fun, dark voyage seemed to be the obvious choice. But then i looked at press-ganged, and realized that it did the same thing as dark voyage (gain any skill, so forbidden lores as well) plus you get a common lore, plus you don't gain insanity, and the only downside is a role-playing feature that isn't neccessariy bad (i would think that most people will react violently to losing your freedom; unless the gm consistently has scenarios where the players have to meekly allow themselves to be captured instead of fighting. It's possible, but it isn't that big of a deal). Also, my group doesn't use the origin path restrictions, just because we think it gimps creativity, so it isn't like you just HAVE to choose dark voyage because you chose duty-bound instead of renegade. And even if you do, it' still dumb that one slot can do the exact same thing as another but also gives you a bonus common lore and less downsides. In fact, if you do use it, for my purposes of stacking forbidden lores it's better to take press-ganged because it lines up with renegade which can give me a second one.

It is silly that it works like that, but it only seems to become silly (in my opinion) when you get rid of the origin restrictions. The idea seems to be that you can't just super munchkin to get insane skills for your convenience. From an RP perspective it makes sense, but from the god's eye view we get of the system yeah it is a fairly big logic hole.

The origin path is just a terribly clunky way to try and do that though. It just makes no sense in many situations. Rogue traders can ONLY be motivated by prestige. Astropaths can ONLY be motivated by endurance. If you are duty bound, something horrible MUST happen in your backstory, because you can only choose between ship-lorn, calamity and dark voyage. And even if you do use it, there shouldn't be redundent choices, period. You shouldn't have to go "Well, i guess i'll take dark voyage. wish i could go with press-ganged because it's basically a straight upgrade."