For me this is a loaded question with no right answer since like you say everything is based on what you plan to do with the vehicle. No matter what tire you choose you will be sacrificing performance in some area, I'm yet to find that perfect tire that performs everywhere 100%. On the the farm I work for I'm in charge of purchasing tires for 50+ pickups and I get different tires based on what they are expected to do and what area I'm willing to sacrifice performance. Everyone is going to have their own opinion on this and people will tell you such and such tire is the best thing out there and they won't run anything else, but this is what I run and my justification.
Conditions our tires see are chip sealed highways, so not as smooth as interstates or city roads. Lots of gravel, County roads are usually 5/8"- around here and some of our field roads are a mix of river rock and crushed rock. Soil is sandy and heavy, we are an irrigated farm so there is mud year around in pivot roads and at times on the field edge. Not a lot of snow around here but ice and freezing fog in the winter is common.
A/T- I run A/T tires on most managers pickups and some service trucks that see mostly highway but do make it to the fields. Most a/t tires are going to last longer than an r/t or m/t when they are seeing a lot of highway miles. Also a/t's generally perform better on hard packed snow or ice. For me they usually provide enough traction for the guys to get around the fields when they are soft or mudding, but since they aren't in it all day everyday they don't need anything more aggressive. In my experience A/T tires haven't held up as well to rock chip as some of the R/T tires I've ran and this is due to the softer compound that gives you the better ride on road and traction on ice. Also when on larger gravel the A/T will have less space between the lugs for the gravel to go so it is more prone to chew up the edge of the lugs.
R/T- I run R/T tires on field managers and some service trucks, these are the guys that spend most of their time on the farm (gravel, dirt, mud) and their highway driving is generally just field to field. While these guys see a lot of off road conditions throughout the day they also see a lot of gravel and some highway so I don't run an M/T for them. M/T tires are usually the softest compound and don't last long on gravel or highway. For us the R/T tires have worked well in these types of conditions because they provide enough traction to deal with soft dirt and mud but also hold up to the gravel roads. Now they do sacrifice performance in ice (again, depending on what brand you're running) but I'm willing to give that up for how little we see that compared to mud and sand.
M/T- I only run an M/T tire on our Irrigation service trucks. These are the pickups that when a circle breaks down they have to be able to make it out to the middle of a wet muddy field to fix it. So traction is number for these guys and I don't really care about longevity. These pickups aren't daily drivers so I can deal with not getting as many miles out of the tires on them.
Now you kind of have to take all that with a grain of salt because someone could be seeing the same conditions as me but have a total different outlook on it based on their experience with different brands of tires than I use. On my personal rigs I use a little of each. Wife's '11 Acadia has goodyear a/t's because I want her to have good winter traction. My '15 Ram 3500 has Goodyear DuraTracs which I think is considered an R/T, personally I like this tire for light off road traction and of the R/T's I've ran is the best on hard packed snow and ice but I've had these on work pickups and they don't like gravel or at least not a lot of it. '18 F250 (work truck) currently has Nitto Trail Grapplers (A/T) which seem to be good so far, but I think the Toyo R/T performed better off road. We'll see what kind of Mileage I get out of the Nitto and if it's worth the trade off in traction, we might make a switch. My trail "overland" rig is a 2000 Grand Cherokee and I run the Maxxis Razr M/T which is probably more aggressive than needed for most Overlanding, but I also won't shy away from snow, deep mud or rocks... if it looks fun. The other thing with my Jeep is it's not my DD and really is only used for trips to the woods and the trails so I'm not really worried about how many mile I get out of them and I want to know I have the traction for whatever stupid crap I try.
So after that excessively long answer... It's really up to what you plan on doing and what areas of performance you're willing to trade. Hopefully that answer was as much helpful as confusing.
