Points protocol formulation and needling technique - needle, active needle, tonify, or pacify?? Cupping?

You were right - to quote you, the answer is "there is no set rule, it depends on the point and the patient."  Even further, it also depends on the system/sub-system you are using.  In some systems those concepts are not used at all, in others they are a primary technique.  From the pure acupuncture perspective, this is really what the schooling and experience is all about.  Anyone can learn to needle someone relatively safely for most points in a matter of days/weeks.  

The reason, in the US at least, that acupunture schools are multi-year graduate programs is because it really matters what you are doing and why in extremely precise terms.  There are are a few schools that respected this so much that they didn't allow student to do any treatments until their clinical rotations in the 3rd year, while others allowed student to student "treatments" and practice fairly quickly.  There are advantages to both sides.

To provide some answer to your question, however, I find the Japanese acupuncture discussions regarding tonification and sedation the most graceful and functionally useful in relative terms.  Our japanese acupuncture section has good introductions to those systems.

Personally, I never used "techniques" to tonify and sedate - just even needling.  But I also relied on medical qi gong techniques, strong utilization of tuina, herbal medicine, etc.  So I'm not saying those techniques do not have merit, I'm just saying they can be uncomfortable to the patient and if you can get the results with more straightforward and comfortable approaches that are easier for you and for your patients, then that is arguably something worth striving for.

What ultimately matters is whether you get results or not and if you can get those results in a reasonable time frame consistently.  That is what every practitioner is generally striving for.  This only comes with first, understanding at least a bit of many systems and approaches and their theoretical back-drops so you are not limited in your thinking and potential, folllowing actual published research on whatever techniques you can find to judge merit in relative terms, and then your own and your colleagues clinical experiences.

As for your other question, cupping and needling have different functions, so that is also unanswerable as asked.  In the most general terms possible for back pain, if it is coming from deficiency then needling and/or moxa may be best, if it's from excess, cupping may be best - in many cases some combination of both are best - in others manual therapies instead of needling or cupping is best.