Hi,
You are right.
When the payment/shipping system is processing the cart, it counts the products' options too.
In HikaShop you can say that the options are put separately in the cart or displayed with the main product.
We can improve the algorithms but we have to add a specific option, because your case is logical, but the contrary is logical too. Someone could want to limit the total number of products, options included.
Regards,
Jerome - Obsidev.com
HikaMarket & HikaSerial developer / HikaShop core dev team.
Also helping the HikaShop support team when having some time or couldn't sleep.
By the way, do not send me private message, use the "contact us" form instead.