I re-read your original post and that sentence jumped out at me. My heavy touring bike has a Rohloff hub and my medium and light touring bikes have 3X8 derailleur drive trains.

I have already written two long posts, much of that with detail about Rohloff bikes. So I will keep this one short. I see the Rohloff as the right choice if I am going somewhere like here, where I need something that won't break because I will be far from help:



When I took the photo above, I was about 100 km from any paved roads, and much further from any bike shop.

And I see a derailleur bike as being my choice if I am going someplace like here:



Paved roads where I am closer to a post office or a bike shop, a derailleur system is more likely my choice. It will give me more than the 14 gears offered by the Rohloff. Derailleur systems with a triple crank can give you a much wider range than the Rohloff 526 percent. And when originally specifying the system, a derailleur system can give you narrower steps between gears.

Triple cranks are getting rare and not many new bikes come with a triple any more. That might have to be an add on later, which may include a different shifter and front derailleur.

Others have suggested Co-Motion, in a previous post I mentioned that a former co-worker loved her Rodriguez touring bike. Both of those companies build up custom bikes, I am sure they could fit a 3X derailleur system.

I did a five week tour in eastern Canada in 2019, most of it was on pavement and where gravel was an option I could choose between gravel trails vs paved roads. I would have brought a derailleur bike for that trip if I had an S&S coupled derailleur bike, but my only S&S coupled bike is my Rohloff bike so that is the reason I rode my Rohloff bike on that tour. (That trip had complex transportation to and from, the S&S couplers were a priority on that trip.) The bike was great on that tour, but I spun out on a lot of the long shallow downhills because the Rohloff 526 percent gear range resulted in not having the higher gears that I have on my derailleur bikes.

On the other hand, if you are not mechanically inclined and would rather have a bike mechanic do your mechanical work, a Rohloff can work great for you for all types of trips, pavement or gravel, but your total gear range is still only 526 percent.

That said, finding a mechanic in USA that knows how to work on a Rohloff is rare. A neighbor is a bike mechanic, works at one of the larger bike shops in my community, my Rohloff bike is the only one he has ever seen, nobody has brought a Rohloff into his shop for any work. So, if you do not want to learn how to do an oil change, it is unlikely that you will find any local mechanics that know how to do that either.

A Pinion 18 would give you a wider range than a Rohloff, I suggest you look at that also if you really want to avoid derailleurs. Someone on this forum has toured with his Pinion drive bike.
2022 Scotland Trip - The Hebridean Way