I feel like I've asked a lot of the same questions myself. For all the things it does well FTM2014 lacks others that I think would be no brainers to add and experiment with, but then again I consider myself a newbie to this field and maybe no one has ever thought of it before.
That said, would it kill them to let me add media to specific places? I Mean seriously..... I could go on......
As for how far off a "direct line" someone may be, it seems to me like you could just change the "home person" to easily check, then you'd know automatically if you were working on a direct ancestor of an individual or not.
Regarding GenSmarts, It's on my list of software to purchase, probably sooner rather than later. Maybe when I can add a few more monitors.