Sub-rules are an OKAY thing depending in the game you're making. Why would you not include them? Because, as you said, it takes a lot of work to balance a complex thing, and game creators don't want to waste their time balancing out house rules that not everyone will use. That's the long and short of it. Optional rules take up page counts and time that could be used to make the core product better. Time and money. Time and money. Time and money.

Think about what you're asking. You want FFG to add in an optional rule for you. Why? So they can test it out and balance it? Time and money. So you can feel good that your house rule showed up in print? Seems kind of selfish. Nothing is stopping you from making up a house rule and using it, or even posting it up here. Lots of practical reasons are stopping FFG from testing out extra rules and subsystems that are not unquestionably adding to the game.

Core group is referring to it just being the same people disagreeing with you frequently, not a dig on anyone's gaming credentials.

And I refer to it as a lesson because I sincerely think that your posts reflect a crucial lack of understanding for the role that adding complexity has for the entirety of a game system. You can take that as an insult if you want, the same way I can choose to take your patronizing attitude toward people who don't want to add a bunch of frivolous rules as the product of ignorance rather than malice.

The ways we see the world differ too much to dig into this conversation any more.

I will not change your mind - you won't change mine. Waste of time.

If you go accourding to your logic, also cover would never be damaged, as the cover itself would get no harm.

That's how I run it personally to keep bookkeeping low.

I like your suggested rules a lot better than D20's system for doing it. I'd probably wing it though and adjust based on likelihood, so it simply wouldn't be possible for one player to grapple a genestealer (just as an example) but a servitor could be grappled for free.

I'd also make it easier for the successful grappler to maintain the hold, maybe a +10. I'd also only let the grappler use the grapplee as cover after they 'pass out' from strain, since it would be a lot harder to hold onto someone like that when they can still struggle and fight back.

I think size of the grappled target should be taken into account.

Shouldnt be possible to grapple a higher deamon ;D

Size could add or subtract from the difficulty.

There's already a size modifier in combat (pg. 129).

Yeah, but this modifier makes it EASIER to attack a bigger target.

I think it would be rather more difficult though to keep a larger target in your grapple.

So you're proposing having a bonus to hit a large target with guns and swords (as is currently the case), and also a (presumably inverse) penalty to hit a large target with fists?

Not to HIT it, but to GRAPPLE it.

Hitting gets a bonus, holding it tight is more difficult.