EVE New Citizens Q&A

I recently watched the "Redesigned Stars" video and it made me wonder, what are the planets, stars and moons actually for? Just for aesthetic purposes? Or do they actually do something in the game?

You can't have a spaceships game without "space", and you can't have "space" without stars, planets, moons, asteroid belts, and so on. Originally the geography was just eye candy, but over the years CCP has added ways for us to get resources from moons and planets. Star (plasma) mining / refueling is the only thing that they still have to add.

From a gaming perspective, you need "points of interest" for people to gather around and interact with. It would be just as unfun to make a RPG MMO without geography or towns.

Protip: When you are engaging in a massive fleet fight, and you have a spare interdictor alt... send alt to the sun and put bubbles up.
You will get tons of pod kill mails.

Also Protip: Don't use the sun as a celestial warp out.

Suns are for warping to at zero, not vaporising and saying something along the lines of "Wow! Look how prett..." before something decloaks and then vaporises you for all the wrong reasons.

Aside from being planets being used for PI, most cosmic anomalies and signatures will spawn near (within 4 AU) a planet and asteroid belt tends to be within 0.1 AU of a planet. So if you're in a system hunting for someone to shoot, warping between a few planets and hitting d-scan is a good way to find them.

The sun is there to keep the planets in their place.

The stars you see in space are actual other solar systems in EVE, you'll notice that if you plan a route between several systems you get some lines joining some of the stars, that is your actual route through space.

This is true^ Forgot to mention this

Thank you for the correction.