Ken,
You do such a parameter when you define a match in the software - how many stages, and how many strings in each stage.
In the name of efficiency, I made some design choices awhile back that I'd have to revise to handle matches larger than 16 stages. One was the ability to fit the full results on a sheet of paper printed in landscape... Although I suppose I could support even larger matches by not providing any print or web output myself... just having the user export the processed data into a spreadsheet and deal with formatting himself...
I hadn't thought of that...

Jane