Could you explain the "Surface" option and how that applies to sculpting. I might not be getting exactly what it is you are after. Since the sculpting brushes are surface based. They don't just take what is under the brush preview. It looks at the connected polygons on the surface of the model and if they are with the radius of the brush then the vertices are affected. There is also the "Surface Distance" option on the grab brush which works a little different as well, it walks the surface of the connected edges and calculates the amount of distance travelled from the centre hit point.
Also if you want a duplicate layers option I added it to my own sculpting brush tools if you need it: https://www.plugins4d.com/Product/SculptProjectionBrush
I have asked people a few times what they would want from the Sculpting system as far as additions go. But I don't hear anything at all other than wanting auto retopology and meshing tools. Which aren't actually related to the sculpting tools.
And since R23 there is a new remeshing algorithm built in called "Remesh". Which got improved further in S24 with more options.