After a few months of playing with the ARS, and adding new mods, I found out what the true strength of the ARS is.
Those of you who have read even a fraction of my posts know I get them lengthy, so I'll TL;DR it for you.
A way - not the definitive way, but a consistent way - to get more value out of each ship, reduce your losses using them, and increase enemy losses, is to play to their weaknesses.
ARS ships have weak flux stats, but a fair amount of OP to fit weapons. Rather than fitting weapons that cost a lot of OP and flux to fire, fit mid-cost weapons like their own Bulldog Autocannon, and the vanilla Heavy Autocannon, which are near mirrors of each other.
Spend the rest of the OP on PD, hullmods to reduce recoil and otherwise improve weapon performance and defenses, any remaining OP would be best spent on their dissipation, and you have an excellent standoff fleet that is difficult to approach without sustaining heavy losses for little if any gain.
They have a higher speed than usual, use it to keep distance favorable, both pursuing and maintaining, and dig your heels in whenever your opponent pushes with only partial strength. Kite them when they push all in, and chip away at their furthest elements until their push wears out, or wears down entirely.
Early on, a well-fit Donovan will stand its ground against most fleets without fail, sometimes even on its own, and two can cover each other like a binary of [VERY REDACTED].
Middle and late game, an Alastair can swat fighters with the same efficacy as it can hold off another capital, or prevent its retreat, through it's Web.
Late game, a Gaillard is unmatched with consistency and weight of fire by all but the most broken or OP ships out there. It lives up to its name as the Strength of the ARS.
All the while, Victorias will prove valuable as mainline destroyers, or guided missile support craft, and the rarer but equally valuable Osmond will do what the Alastair can at slightly diminished effectiveness, but at a fraction of the cost.
Lyons built as the tankiest of all ARS cruisers will singlehandedly hold or delay offensives against the rest of your fleet, and be an omnipresent force on the battlefield.
Kings are, for their weight, unmatched against stations, heavily armored capitals, and the occasional trash rush of small destroyers and frigates, and are your premier siege platforms against such targets when you can't spare the capital ships to smash them flat.
I have found my perfect builds for these ships, and I know their true strength as parity fighters.