Ships & Modules

Depends for what. I'd say nightmare for incursions. personal pref, but one of the best for shield fleets.

Since you were gone a lot has changed and the basic premise was to not have one best boat but all of them should have a reason to exist.
With the exception of the Scorpion, all battleships are more or less viable choices for pve but not all pve activities. Some of the activities require you to use a smaller vessel.

there is no best, use a different tool for different jobs.

my favorites are the Machariel, Paladin, Kronos. I usually have at least 2 out of 3 in each mission station.

Mach: Warp speed bonus (yea the number one thing for pve now is warp speed). Good AC dps, Awesome speed and agility, enough projection and dps with arty. Probably the most versatile.
Paladin: brain dead 1100+ dps to 70km+ perma tanks with a med rep, is over tanked in bastion. can swap to pulse for 1300 dps at 30km or so.
Kronos: MJD, Bastion, 1500+ Void dps to the face

other people like: Rattlesnake, missile boats, Gilas, ???
Rattler: Amazing eft dps, but split weapons, and without a missile velocity bonus the missiles take forever to hit. plus the hull itself is slow. I can't stand flying it
missile boats: volley counting sucks, dps isn't all that great. Best at being able to select damage types. bonus Auto-targeting missiles and a MJD make for decent semi afk isk. not being able to blap low transversal targets like approaching frigs annoys me, damage application of missiles is just an annoyance in general.
gilas: brain dead, orbit something and let your drones do all the work. they probably won't die thanks to their huge hp bonus. horribly inefficient but so brain dead I think people like it.