Murphy's Law in New Eden

Murphy's Law was often stated as "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong". The classic case for any pilot in New Eden was meeting the hard counter to whatever ship was being flown or being in the wrong type of ship for the available targets. Sometimes you just wanted to be in a different ship.

There are plenty of other Murphy effects such as:

• Starting a module or at least believing that to be true and you notice later the module is not operational
• Flying into an engagement with the right ammunition loaded for that target and on arrival finding that ship has left and another ship is there, for which the wrong ammunition is now loaded
• Seeing a pilot in one ship and then realising a short while later that they have changed ships when you engage them. This Slasher died to a Rupture but Starwalker initially thought he was about to start fighting a Thrasher and he only noticed his mistake when the cruiser drones started to attack

Starwalker had his fair share of those experiences and was feeling like he wanted to be in a Slasher when he had met a Republic Fleet Firetail. He was actually chasing a Rifter but so was the Firetail and both hunters had landed together. Whilst it had turned out to be a very close fight his Breacher had been destroyed.

He had thought the same thing about being in a Slasher when taking on the Incursus in a Breacher but given that the Incursus pilot had backup in the form of a Malediction the outcome would have been the same in either case.

Sometimes Murphy was not in sight, it was simple stupidity such as when Starwalker was in a Slasher and had decided to take on a:

• Hawk that was non-flashy sitting on the gate. The Hawk took the opportunity to take on the flashy Slasher and Starwalker could easily have simply jumped out of the danger zone. The Slasher was not well equipped to take on a Hawk but he just wanted to see what would happen; would the speed of the Slasher mitigate the damage from rockets? It would not; that result was entirely predictable and there had been no need to test it out for real
• Kestrel that had chased Starwalker into a complex and his Slasher could easily have escaped by warping away immediately or outrunning the Kestrel. However, he wanted to see what would happen against the lower level of damage from the Kestrel, compared to the Hawk. Once it was clear that the speed and armour repairer were insufficient it was too late to run

Starwalker already knew that the Slasher tank was miniscule and that the fit used with the tracking disruptor was not effective against rocket, missile and drone ships. Completely unnecessarily he had also proven that for himself.