If our mages are performing the simple role of army infantrymen, then they have failed to make a meaningful impact in their positions as mages. This cutting down on the equipment they carry seems to be a completely negligible benefit (the wooden wands are free, so there's no Budget benefit, and it's WW1 so we don't have a desperate need for a very minor mobility difference), and the only way I can see it being particularly useful for our mages to have rifles instead of sidearms is if we intend to provide them with enhancing capabilities to rifle combat. And even in THAT case, we shouldn't be making the rifles now because we can better design them to fit that role without having to blow a revision on it.
Not that I think we should be trying to make our mages riflemen. We do not exist in a vacuum -- we exist in World War I, and it's not a war of rifles, it's a war of artillery. Are we going to sit our mages in the front trenches and have them blindly plink away at entrenched opponents, hoping they don't get killed by artillery? Are we going to be sending them over the top? We might as well then be throwing them into a blender, we don't have many mages and especially this early on when they would even with focus have little to keep them alive we should not be using them as fodder.
Not only is the rifle wand not very useful, it is actively detrimental in that it pushes our mages into a role that is dangerous and marginal, and it takes up a design we could instead be using in a far more effective manner, AND takes up a design for a wand at the worst time possible to do so.
Instead, what I believe we should do is use our mages to actually attempt to affect the flow of battle as it is in 1914. This means that back-line magic is more useful than anything else for our starting projects; note that our army primarily depends upon artillery in combat. If we spot for our artillery, and thusly contribute to the bulk of our land power, we can do a far better job of affecting the war, and similar back-line improvements would as well.
The Skysight would also improve army relations a hell of a lot better than would the rifle -- what do you think the General cares about more? Providing him an extremely useful tool in conducting the main body of his warfare, or following his sarcastic remark about turning our mages into base Army troops because we're doing absolutely nothing as is? "Mages would be better suited as Army infantrymen - at least that way they'll be contributing to the war effort, if only barely." Does this sound like arming our troops would actually be any more useful than providing him concrete aid? Spotting for artillery is unquestionably more contribution to the war effort than that.
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Topic: Wands Race 2: The Great War - Kolubaria (Read 23901 times)