OP covered the most longstanding problems in the game pretty well.

Just one thing-

* Blinking after gear swaps - The person you're targeting and their position are independent of the clothes they're wearing, so why is it programmed to break focus when someone gear swaps? This is annoying.
I doubt that it is "specifically programmed" to break your target lock. How it is, is that your character model momentarily disappears while the game loads the new model. The game uses the height/size of the model to determine where to put the targeting cursor, so when the model disappears, it has no place to put the target.

It's still something stupid that shouldn't be there, but I'm pretty sure the losing target is just a side effect rather than a conscious decision.

Then again, the solution is the same regardless- program it so it doesn't do that. ;p What happens when you think out loud.