Crab
It is never the only option but it is the basis for what ever the Captain does. It is a framework that has been distilled over many thousands of hours of NS flying by hundreds of experienced NS pilots and believe it or not Crab it works!
There will always be "out of the box" scenarios that require experience to satisfactorily solve. You would, however be hard pressed to point to an offshore emergency that has ended badly due to someone slavishly following the SOPs/Checklist whilst HC has already shown you one which did when the checklist wasn't followed and erroneous technical information was used to justify that decision
I would, also, hazard a guess that every NS pilot has had a false fire warning but very few have had a real one. So SOPs help prevent a non-event becoming an event.
I am sure the RAF still has SOPs written in the Flying Order book and GASOs or what ever they are called nowadays. RAF checklists are also far more extensive than civilian ones - perhaps to prevent RAF pilots making an emergency situation worse by doing their own thing
HF