I think most of the arguments about rails aren't whether they're useful at all, but about the opportunity cost of taking them. On the OSP side it's way easier to justify, because the ships you want to shoot at with MDs, capitals, can be hard to hit with your backline competitor: containers. Killing those high armor targets is the biggest struggle OSP has in most matches. Further, outside of MDs, OSP just isn't as adept at denying firing lanes as ANS. Overall, having some MD support on the OSP side shores up a lot of weaknesses OSP tends to have and they bring useful advantages that their direct backline competitor, container liners, don't really bring. But on the ANS side it's much harder to justify taking a fleet of Railstones. The reason why is because they're directly competing with Hybrids. Hybrids are aiming at the same targets (Ocellos, Monitors, and Bulkers) and they're doing it from the back line, so they fulfill basically the same niche as rails. But, Hybrids have the advantage of instantly crippling targets, firing around cover, and not requiring the firing ship to leave cover. The main advantage rails have, suppressing firing lanes, is not something ANS is really struggling for. The fires and debuffs that rails start aren't really an advantage, as they take a long time to work, whereas Hybrids just instantly cripple their targets. I wouldn't say that longevity, the other rail advantage, is all that significant, because the typical ANS team has plenty of capital firepower with the necessary longevity already. So, ya, that's my struggle with ANS rails. Their opportunity cost, compared to bringing a bunch of Hybrids, or another two Axfords or three Vauxes, seems really high. It's a lot harder to justify on the ANS side.
Only once have I seen ANS rails do any work in a match and in that instance OSP happened to have zero long range weapons and we still beat the ANS team.
