Heck Cet hit the debrief limit in retail for a mutlitplayer mission. It's not hard to do at all really. With campaign persistent variables I could see 40 being hit easily. Think about it. A different briefing stage based on what ships you still have left out of a fleet. Same with briefings. You could need several similar stages just for different briefing icons.
While were on the subject are there any other limits? Say messages, background objects, # of events etc? Besides the 4096 character limit for a single event that is.
From the quick look I took at the code does that 4096 character limit apply to things like ships, briefing stages, etc as well?