For me, the answer to the original question depends on what bass I'm playing. My fender style basses seem to pair really well with regular old cheap Daddario XL nickel roundwounds. Nice balance of string life, feel, bright tone, and consistency that works great for my fender types and a lot of other basses I've tried.
For my Peavey T-40 I'm really liking DR Lo-riders (stainless). I tried nickel daddarios, but they weren't bright enough to get the ric-type tones I wanted out of the T-40. The DR's are much nicer strings, have a great tone, have decent life and hit the tone I'm looking for, more or less.
Rotos are tricky... they're the roughest strings I've ever played (well, the stainless "swing bass" strings, which is what most people refer to as "rotos"), but no other strings I've tried can get that exact "roto" tone. That Geddy Lee / Chris Squire zing... Lo-riders come close, and feel better on my hands, but the tone isn't quite the same. Rotos also don't seem to last all that long, and the ultra-bright tone fades within a few days. Mine usually die completely within a month. For my general day to day stainless string usage, I'm sticking with Lo-riders for the time being.