Oh god I've been through restrictive rules sets and they aren't fun and just put people off.

Yes there is indeed a minimum barrier of entry to FC heavyweights and that is true of every weight class. It's important to keep driving innovation in the weight class and restricting the higher tech holds the hobby back. I don't see why we need to penalise people for pushing ahead to come up with new things. If heavies are proving to be out of budget just to build than maintaining it is not going to be possible and people should look to the lighter weight classes to start with.

Also 'military grade steel' is normally Hardox which is pretty cheap to get all things considering.