Eve online has always just pretended to be a space sim.
There are concepts in the game that would be unlikely in a simulation game but are common in MMO's. Think of fast travel, instance dungeons and more.
One of Eve Online's strengths is that it conforms gameplay to the MMO setting. That is one of the main driving factors in it's design and allows for example for Time dilation, huge battles and continuous universe and economy that it is famous for.
This is different from for example World of Warcraft, in my view that is a RPG first MMO second. That is one of the reasons it has sharding and smaller pvp battles.
The monolithic world needs to be big to spread everyone out. And it's easier to create ten thousand "systems" than it would be to create an immersive terrestrial world with a similar scale. Each EVE system is just a bunch of objects floating in a 3D space that you travel between.
And of course tide played a major role, with the Germans during the Battle of Jutland racing to get past a sand bang to avoid being stuck at open sea & be mauled even more by the British.
- adding various types of radiators (solid, droplet, etc.), gloving when weapons fire or engines activate, shooting them off prevents system from running
- planets on eccentric orbits with wildly varying surface conditions in mere days as the planet periodically get closer and farther to the star, from frozen solid to metals flowing like water days apart
- aerostat habitats in the atmosphere on gas giants or Venus like worlds, you could fly around but go to low (or get swept by a storm) and you might get crushed
- radiation belts, sun grazing comets or energy harvesting stations very close to a stellar body, can enter for a very limited time until even your shielded systems burn out - and good like with repair space walks!
- tidally locked bodies, where one side is always illuminated and the other one has an eternal night, with perhaps a thin habitable belt where conditions are just right for life, presenting interesting options for story telling and world building
And even that solution is only temporary. Its possible to watch the simulation go on so long that planets begin to de-orbit the sun as the math simulation breaks down. For spoiler reasons players don't run into this issue, but it exists.
PS: If you haven't played Outer Wilds and you enjoy exploration/puzzle games go play it. Avoid spoilers if possible.
How does one want a realistic space game but also hate spreadsheets?
Anyway I don't need a spreadsheet to know where a moon is gonna be in N time. A simple visual simulation I can whip up with AI in minutes would do the trick.
Ok, lets try one example, the game has a mechanic where a station has a docking port where all ships exit oriented in a single direction. Many pilots have bookmarks that allow them warp very quickly away because turning around is slow so the bookmark is oriented straight directly away from the exit. How does one deal with that in a solar system if we assume even minimal orbital simulations?. It has 9 planets 33 moons, and only the dumb players warp directly to any particular planet or moon because of course everyone expects that, so they place them in random positions in space.
Are you able to do n-body math in your head?
When has it ever done that.
Keep in mind, I played like starting year 3