@Rouben Rostamian  
Ahh so after looking at your complete input and comparing it to mine the only difference was that my ODE system "satODE1" was fully bound by a pair of brackets, after removing that everything worked perfectly

No problem about not wanting to explain the brackets thing, Ive just looked it up myself (as I shouldve done in the first place honestly)

Thanks for all of your help with this.

@Rouben Rostamian  

Ive restored the brackets and now my input is

ics:=[x(0)=1, y(0)=0,vx(0)=0,vy(0)=1];
with(DEtools):
subsys:=subs({G=1,M=1},[satODE1]);
DEplot(subsys,{x(t),y(t),vx(t),vy(t)},t=-2..2,[ics],scene=[x(t),y(t)],scaling=constrained);

But it is still giving me the same error message

Error, (in DEtools/DEplot) system must have same number of dependent variables as DE's.

are these error messages usually inaccurate by the way?

@Rouben Rostamian  

ok thanks for clearing that up, quick question though,

If you use the brackets botht for  case where you want only 1 orbit and for for cases where you want multiple orbits,when would you not put the brackets around "ics" in the DEplot command ?

Also do different types of brackets have different uses in maple or is it just for visual clarity?

@Rouben Rostamian  

Also, when I try the fixes I get an error message

I put in:

with(DEtools):
ics:=x(0)=1, y(0)=0,vx(0)=0,vy(0)=1;
subsys:=subs({M=1,G=1},[satODE1]);
DEplot(subsys,[x(t),y(t),vx(t),vy(t)],t=-2..2,[ics],scene=[x(t),y(t)],scaling=constrained);

and get the message

Error, (in DEtools/DEplot) system must have same number of dependent variables as DE's.

Im fairly sure there are 4 DE's  and 4 declared so have I made another syntax error?

@Rouben Rostamian  
Can you explain what it is that maple is doing differently when using the square brackets.

When not using the brackets is it just taking the first initial condition in the list and the trying to use the others as options of the DEplot command?