There's so many factors that go into rules, the biggest being the number of players. I think the ideal/more typical op with a large turnout would have a respawn point with spawns every certain amount of minutes. It also allows for potential medic rules but at a slower pace ie. 30sec-1 minute to revive a player.
With smaller teams, say teams of 10, medics and or a certain number 'lives' are the basis for keeping games going. Another factor is where we play the game. For example, the last op would have worked out perfectly fine with each stage played separately had there been no gun problems. However, if there's an op played only at the far half of the field (creek to pond) with a decent number of players, there is more potential for an ongoing endless game because everyone will more or less stay in the same vicinity. However that leads us to the same problem of having a giant field of bushes/dead plants with no pathways, no large obstacles of cover, and no fort.
To get more playing time and eliminate down time there should at least 1-2 players on each team who really understand the entire scenario and is responsible for relaying to their team throughout the day. And we'd have to get out our radios again.
One interesting idea that I saw at an op that I attended (if there are enough players) involved having a fraction of the team hold a large fort for a certain amount of time (15 minutes in this case). The attackers began from one side and were allowed to surround the fort if they chose so. The fort should have been easily defended btw. After the time was up, the rest of the defending team moved in from the other side of the field theoretically creating chaos and a big mess of combat as they tried to rescue their comrades under siege. Obviously my team took the fort within 5 minutes.. but that's beside the point. The other years it worked out great supposedly.
There were a lot of people at the op, but they had it set up so you could play all day with no breaks if you wanted. Each respawn there always seemed to be someone who knew of an objective they needed or a place to reinforce the lines. The best thing was that you could do anything you wanted. What I did all day was just run around and kill people. Occasionally I'd follow some idiot 'leader' into a deathtrap to accomplish some objective, but that was the fun of it.
Of course with enough people you can always keep playing, but with our limitations we need to find ways to keep an advancing team from bagging the objective and making off with it in a single run. But also not to the point where it's impossible. Obviously this doesn't apply to the last op because we played it in parts. An example of a way to keep the game rolling is to rather than having a grab and run objective, make the team with the objective hold it for a certain amount of time before being able to move with it. And in the meanwhile make a stop or 2 along the way for whatever reason to do another objective before they can continue with the original objective. That would eliminate the grab and go that usually wins a skirmish game and require multiple parts to be completed before progressing. The '2 men to carry objective' is also a great idea.
Multiple objectives add a nice touch to the game. It's quite interesting to not even know who 'won' the op until after the game is completely over. Of course we'd need teams of 15-20+ for that, but past skirmish turnouts have shown that there really are that many players in the area that like to play, it's just a matter of finding them and more to come to our games.
Another thing we don't want is to have a team get to the point where losing is inevitable. At the op that I mentioned earlier, just about all of my team went on lunchbreak at the same time (couldn't eat lunch on the field due to full paintball mask requirements). When we came back, the handful of guys in our team (about 40 players) were trying to face down an advancing 100+ just outside our spawn. Eventually we worked our way out of it and players continued to do more objectives. I guess my point is that any thing that makes an op continuous is a good thing.
