My piece of advice, for all that's worth, is to pick based on aircraft and mission. Being close to home is nice, but you're going to deploy, go TDY, and do all kinds of other stuff that will take you away. Once you're used to that, being far from home isn't too big a deal. Besides that, the mission of the B-1 compared to the mission of the E-3 is words apart.
I'll give you a quick and dirty (sts) on the Hercs. Others here can fill in more if they want.
C-130, a slick- trash hauler, gets dudes and equipment from A to B. Lots of options for bases, but navs are slowly going the way of the dodo with the advent of the J model.
AC-130- Spectre, Spooky, gunship. Flies in left handle circles all day, and rains lots of hurt on the bad guys with a 25mm, 40mm, and 105mm weaponry.
MC-130-there's an H, P, and W model, the Talon and T2, Shadow and the Spear (Wombat). With subtle variations, all do spec ops low level insertion and exfil of snake eaters, or they refuel helos that insert snake eaters.
HC-130- combat search and rescue, refuels helos as well.
That's the different Hercs at a very brief glance. Hope it helps.