Plus I'm sure many people won't have bought the game for realism, but simply as a 'game'.
Actually you are wrong about that... If you read the answers in this topic:
http://www.shipsim.com/ShipSimForum/index.php/topic,146.0.html
you will find out that most people prefer the technical simulator aspects.
The answers so far are distributed like this:
Simulation: 61
Arcade (your simple 'game'...): 0
Neither simulation nor arcade: 3
Both simulation and arcade: 1
I know that these answers do not correspond to every user of Ship Simulator, but they show a very clear tendency. We want realism!
Regards
groennegaard