Need advice on Germany plans

You could shorten the travel time if you stay in Nuremberg instead of Bamberg and make your day trip from there (shorter journey from Rothenburg, shorter journey from Nuremberg to Salzburg). Bamberg is good, but Nuremberg has more to offer.

After Augsburg you can use Nuremberg as your base town - go there first.

Augsburg - Nuremberg (base town) can be done in under 2 hours by regional train or by direct fast train in 70 minutes.

Nuremberg - Bamberg day outing = 40 minutes each way by direct train
Nuremberg - Rothenburg day outing = 75 minutes each way
(These day trips cost just €20 each with the VGN Tagesticket Plus - which is also good for inner-city transport in Nuremberg and Bamberg on those days. Should you buy the VGN pass on Saturday, the same pass is valid on Sunday for the second day trip!)

Nuremberg - Salzburg can be done faster if you use high-speed trains.

I think that city of Nuremberg (500k people) and Bamberg town (80k people) cannot really be compared and have different things to offer. The old town of Bamberg is UNESCO world culture heritage and feels very different to much larger and more industrial Nuremberg which has also nice places and special sights such as Kaiserburg or Albrect-Dürer-Haus. Neither left or right nor better or worse, more a question what visitors want to experience.

Info: Tourists ranked Bamberg's old town on #32, Kaiserburg was ranked #50 in Germany's top 100 places.

I was drawn to the more small town of bamber and how quaint it would be but I also realize that may not be the best place for a base station and maybe I should just visit it instead

"I was drawn to the more small town of bamberg and how quaint it would be..."

Rothenburg is "quaint" (although the tourist horde there compromises its quaintness.) But if you expect the same kind of quaintness out of Bamberg, it may actually disappoint you. It's much larger - a small-ish city, definitely not a small town in size or feel. Bamberg isn't Nuremberg - but it is more similar to Nuremberg than it is to Rothenburg, IMO.

For a truly quaint small town... with not so many tourists... you will do better with an outing to Iphofen. Like Bamberg, Iphofen is 45 minutes from Nuremberg by direct train. Please scroll through the photos at the next page for a look.

https://www.stadtbild-deutschland.org/forum/index.php?thread/2985-iphofen-galerie/&s=cfae982d9017b98c3db130e79ddaf11240076575

Re: Germany's Top 100 Places...Besides the expected obvious places, some unexpected pleasant surprises too...Lübeck, Sauerland, Teutoburg Forest, Weimar, and Helgoland. I've only met and know of one foreign visitor who went out to Helgoland as a day trip, a French woman in the early 1970s.