[jacquesm]

I have a very concrete application in mind but want something that is versatile enough that I can go and do another application without having to go through the whole selection process again (and learn a bunch of new stuff on top of that).

Of course specialization is optimal but as soon as you have to make multiple things and your resources are limited then a general purpose tool is the better choice.

Compare it with hammers. If I only need to do metalworking I'd buy a bench hammer. But if I need to do metalworking and woodwork then a clawhammer is probably a better choice.

As for the selection process, this was just the preliminaries, it's far from over and the next step will be a lot more work.