Sorry Strg(Steuerung) is the german meaning of Ctrl(Control), my bad :) For the shrinkwrap feature, you could try Wrapit or the max retopo script(which is free, but not as awesome as wrapit).
You're quite right - customization is almost everything artist needs. But some features are still not presented in max, e.g. REAL raycast (camera mapped) selection (lasso or rect), not the "similar" stuff under "Preview selection" group in Max. I had to spent some time (when started to work in softimage after max) - to get…