Yeah. You seem to have heard incorrectly.
Whenever we played we always played as Command Level Characters. The way the system works is this.
Pick a Species.
This gives you your base stats and species specific skills
Pick a Role.
This gives you your Starfleet Role, and covers all the standard TNG roles.
Then you tailor it, with packages that give you additional skills/stats/edges following the path;
Early Life (your childhood)
Academy (Additional Training)
Cadet Cruise (either 1 point to spend anywhere or a package of skills that are worth a bit more)
This would get you a freshly minted ensign, wet behind the ears and out of the academy. But from here you now get the Tours of Duty. 1st tour is worth 10 development points, each additional tour is worth 5points and last 1D6+1 years (or narrator specified time), each tour should represent the most significant event.
Simply purchase tours to taste, and feel free to tailor the points.
What the information you got probably meant was that its difficult to make Command Characters on a par with those in the TV series, but for a starting character and with some re-allocation of points its easy. The rules allow for you to run characters with different levels of experence, as there are fixed DPs for the packages, but no limit for the number of packages. This can vary between players so your capain could be more experienced and skilled than the young ensign at CONN.
Now as for books.
The DS9 Core Rules is best. It gives you the same game rules, but also the relevant species and civilian rules (which are slightly different allocation of points), and in a section at the back of the book all the relevant Federation species and Starfleet generation rules from the TNG core book.
After that the TNG Players Guide is best, this gives you a few more roles/character generation options/species/psionics and some add on rules...
Those two would cover you for the game. Everything else is just gravy.
DanG/Darth Gurden
The Voice of Reason and Sith Lord
“Putting the FUNK! back into Dysfunctional!”
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"Ad astrae per scientia" (To the stars through knowledge)