It is not two Skills with the NFB trait. The only Skill with NFB being used is TO Camo. Taking the FAQ ruling further, there is nothing in Camo State or the Camo Skill telling you that one must be using the Skill to remain in the State. The Skill says it "allows" you to be in the State, but does not require the use to be in the State. Your later point is something I brought up earlier and in another thread specifically due to the way the FAQ ruling effects it. There is a small window when the lack of NFB does come into play though and that is if you are spotted by an enemy unit while attempting to reactivate the HoloEcho State (due to HD or if you missed a window and mistakenly activated). In that situation if you were activating HoloL2 you would suffer the NFB and not gain the ODD/Mimetism benefits. Giving the States the NFB Trait would help with the issues, but there would need to be a separate HoloL3 State without the NFB trait then.
Surpise Shot (the skill) does not have the NFB label. It's requirements are that you were able to legally enter a marker state and also be in that marker state at the beginning of the order in which you use it. Per this FAQ, it's perfectly legal to apply -9 from the regular camo state (-3 from surprise shot and -6 from TO). To be fair, though, at that point your opponent is probably just going to dodge for the PH-3.
This is such a terrible attitude both by players and game company. Someone found a weird "exploit" that works against the methods of the game and the guy we all trust to interpret the rules is like yeah sure go nuts and instead of CB immediately addressing this problem their ruling caused, we have to "wait and see" with zero guarantee that this will be answered in the next FAQ. This shit is mega frustrating. We've been getting a lot of new players recently, which is great, but when the veterans discuss this kind of shit the new people look like they wanna run for the hills. If we're gonna have to "wait and see" every time the player base finds something like this in N4, then there isn't going to be an N5.
All camo levels have NFB, not only TO camo (I never said that surprise shot had it), even mimetism have NFB (which is obligatory). Also, if marker and Skill are different and unrelated things, beign in holoecho state from level 2 will not affect the mimetism/odd of patroclus, because he would be in the state (which doesn't have have NFB) and still would have active mimetism/ODD without the needing of the level3 of holoproyector.
This is the second time you are bringing this up and it seems a very good point. If separating state and skill make Holo 3 the exact same thing as Holo 2, then the separation is very likely not what the rules mean/are intended to do
So a Hafza Specops with mimetism could start game with both on? I mention this one because the Holoprojector 1 is free, but almost all Specops can spend 8 pts for Mimetism + Holoprojector (Aleph's have no holoprojector, however, for example), not to mention the funny chance of rolling booty 2 for ODD/Mimetism with holoprojector 1 or 2... something that can be done on any ITS scenario with Panoplies, because those allow you to choose the table, meaning a 12pts Bashi Bazouk could go on with 2 echoes and in marker state and ODD... Lv3 of Holoprojector also allows to be part of a Fireteam. Not that Patroclus will ever be (since it's even worse than a tropical/fluff combo: in fact such fireteam only protects Patroclus and avoids Achilles to be Impetuous). But yeah, it mentions the removal of NFB from the Holoprojector gear.
Aside from the fireteam situation, Ayaxas and myself brought this up a few posts above yours. There is a corner case where the NFB of Holo2 could lead to issues that Holo3 would not suffer from. The FAQ ruling has significantly altered the way everyone has played all these rules though and is leading to the situations we are all discussing. Everyone gets that the skills all have NFB. That's not the issue. The problem, yet again, is that the States that you enter do not have NFB and nothing in the Skill or State indicates that the Skill must remain active in order to be in the state. To the contrary, the FAQ ruling that you cannot exit a marker state at-will indicates that you are not using the Optional Skill at all when in the State.
I brought the interactions with Holo up earlier because the FAQ ruling RAW does lead to these situations.