I'll bite.
We have a few campaigns running at the moment which tend to be either weekly (for 3-4 hours in the evening) or or monthly (for 7-8 hours on a weekend day). Currently all but one evening game are on Roll20 due to the recent unpleasantness, before that they were at home.
Number of combats per session varies hugely. For example last Sunday's game (D&D 5e rather than PF, but with a similar rhythm) was one large fight followed by a lot of investigation. A previous Friday night PF session was pretty much non-stop combat as we were wading through a dungeon - maybe four/five combat encounters, but there was a certain amount of blurring into each other, as the dungeon was set "as is", and running away in the wrong direction was a bad idea.
One thing I (as a mostly player) tend to kick back at is the "four encounters then rest for th day" routine. I seem rto be constantly pushing the rest of the party to keep going fowardn - as long as we still have spells and HP we can keep going. that fits with that particular GM's style of writing, which is to set a big dungeon and if the party go out to rest they are liable to find the monsters have built new traps, called in reinforcements and undone all the PCs work in exploring. He writes for an 8 - 10 encounter day rather than a 4 encouter one.
It varies widely from game session to game session in my group. As the GM I tend to "preplan" my encounters rather than randomly rolling to see if it happens as we used to long ago. But for me it's just sort of reading the room during the game. I tend to only have one, maybe two major combat encounters per session, but it can go up or down. Our sessions seldom go beyond four hours anymore, given that a couple of my players drive two and a half hours one way to get here so I'd rather have a shorter session than have friends driving home while tired.
If the story is reliant on player input, then I could go a couple sessions without combat, if the story is mostly the DM writing a novel for a captive audience, then I'd like there to be tons of combat. When I run games, the players are largely in control of if and when something turns to combat. Encounters are typically organic to the world, so there isn't a lot of prep needed, though I have had to put together mutual threat assessment rules so players aren't blindsided by encounter difficulty and can strategize a bit.
We play on roll20, 4 hours, once a week. Everyone DMs, we each have our own worlds and stories and such, and games last a few years with occasional revisiting of old worlds or games.
One combat is enough to focus/provide stress relief in a 3 hour game session, IME. Not every session requires one but it helps.
The games are at one of our houses (NZ, not Auckland; lockdowns mostly haven't been a problem.)
Three to four hour sessions with two to four combat encounters on average. Your mileage may vary as Players may roleplay some segments more than expected and draw out a sequence longer than anticipated. As long as everyone enjoys the session, that is all that matters.
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I try to have 1 combat per every 3 hours of sesh at a minimum, but I usually try to shoot for about 3 combats in a 5-6 hour sesh.
If they're coming up on 3 hours and haven't reached my next planned encounter, that's when I go to Ye Olde Random Encounter chart and start rolling %die, or just attack the party with whatever I think would be appropriate.
Usually about every 2-3 level ups, I do "Challenge Encounters", where I'll put the group into combat for an entire session while trying to kill some BBEG or leviathan of some kind. And in these fights, sometimes I'll have 20 things on my Initiative tracker, unless its just one single leviathan-like monster. Sometimes these encounters can go 1 and a half sessions :P Anywho, the point is to completely drain the PC's of everything their character can do, and it's a lot more fun than it sounds. Because, who doesn't like to take their brand new level 10 badass with all their new fancy spells and toys out for a test drive on the Autobahn.
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My sessions generally last for 5 to 6 hours. As for how many combat there is, it really depend on what part of the adventure my players are at. If they are in in dungeon we'll be looking at 4 to 6 encounter within one session. If they are taking part in an investigation or a political part of the adventure, there might be 1 or two combat encounter, but it's also entirely possible that there is none.
I have a few solution to solving the 5 minutes adventuring days:
1. I make time an issue. Most of my quest will have a time limit. If my players rest after each battle because they go nova in each battle, they will reach a point where the baddies just succeeded at doing what they we're trying to achieve, which might not be game over but it will definetly be bad news.
2. I homebrewed that spellcasters don't fully regenerate their magical energy between rest. I personally play with spell points, but basically my system would give back an equivalent of Caster level+ Spellcasting Stat mod spell slot back per long rest. Sponteanous spellcaster regeneration is increased by 50% while 4th level spellcasters regeneration is decreased by 50%. It might not be a perfect rule, but it still discourage casters from spending all their spells in one battle.
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If the story is reliant on player input, then I could go a couple sessions without combat, if the story is mostly the DM writing a novel for a captive audience, then I'd like there to be tons of combat. When I run games, the players are largely in control of if and when something turns to combat. Encounters are typically organic to the world, so there isn't a lot of prep needed, though I have had to put together mutual threat assessment rules so players aren't blindsided by encounter difficulty and can strategize a bit.
We play on roll20, 4 hours, once a week. Everyone DMs, we each have our own worlds and stories and such, and games last a few years with occasional revisiting of old worlds or games.
The challenge I'm trying to handle is balancing the wants of different players at my table. Two of us are very explorer/story teller oriented, one is a happy hack and slasher, one is a quiet mostly skills and combat type, another is an instigator and actor type. We also have a player who's new, and one hardly ever there. Of the first three, we've got two who could go a long while sans combat, but that leaves the hacker with less to engage with. As one of the story teller types, I don't want to make my players feel like a captive audience.
If most/all of your combats evolve organically from in game decisions, do you ever pre prep combats? If so how? If not, how do you manage on the fly? What are mutual threat assessment rules?
The players are usually fighting people they know or have met before, so I'll have a bare bones character sheet available by the time they decide to fight that person. I don't know who they'll fight, or even what side of a conflict they'll be on, but if I don't need a unit now, I'll need it later, so I just make more.
Combats will frequently happen in similar locations or even the same location, so I'm not drawing up new maps all the time. If the players are going somewhere that would require a map for combat to work, I'll make one and keep it around since it's pretty likely they'll come back there eventually. I keep my maps mechanically useful without going too much into appearances, so you'll have detailed elevation changes and surface materials but it won't have sprites for all the stuff around the room. That lets me draw them pretty quickly and experiment with weirder maps.
The mutual threat assessment thing is based on an engagement distance tool I use instead of rerolling perception and stealth every round. When two groups become aware of each other, you have each group roll bluff and sense motive. Subtract the bluff roll from the sense motive roll, and that's the number of rounds you need to observe the other group to determine their threat to you and hostility level. That's assuming there's no blatant hostile actions or attempts at intimidation. This lets the group avoid conflict in non-dungeon encounters, and approach groups when their more hostile elements are away.
The engagement distance thing is just perception-stealth*perception distance modifier(usually 10)
I try to let the players chose how many combat encounters they'll have. If it seems like one player isn't getting what they want consistently, then I'll put a thumb on the scale by reminding the party of unresolved combat needs. It's tricky and imperfect, making people happy always is. Having rules for negotiations breaking down into combat helps keep the combat people involved during negotiations, but it's not always enough.