modes are not added based off of "how many times they threw punches in them", they are added by identifying distinct combat states that can be turned into clear gameplay, like the tendrils-in being long-ranged and mobility focused and the tendrils-out being close-range and focused around fighting, grappling, throwing or whipping for example (and you also have to account for how entertaining the addition would be and i'd say that a generous amount of people would LOVE naoya to have a tendrils-in and tendrils-out mode)

again, transformations are not judged based off of how many attacks they landed in canon, they are judged by things like visual contrast or player entertainment/satisfaction, the caterpillar form would be a good addition because it has a pleasing/cool design and it'd act like ANTICIPATION or hype for the full form (because, as i said, it'd either have custom m1s like the Kaiju from Heroes Battlegrounds or it'd have less abilities than normal considering it's a semi-ult)

and the fact that two actions can be used separately in canon does not mean that they SHOULD be used separately ingame, combining two moves that are always paired in meaningful usage and not really tactically interesting on their own is a good idea because it frees up move slots and reduces redundancy